GRESSION 

AMPAIGN 

Book 


Socialist  Congressional 
Campaign  Book 

Compiled  by  tbe 

Information  Department  of 

THE  SOCIALIST  PARTY 


CARL  D.  THOMPSON,  Director 
RALPH  KORNGOLD,  Special  Assistant 


Of  1H£  ./ 

BKiwnsmr  of  ttxwois 


20»t0¥tai4 


Published  by  The  Socialist  Party 

803  W.  Madison  St. 
Chicago 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PART  I. 


PART  I. 


THE  SOCIALIST  PARTY,  ITS  PLATFORM  AND  PRO¬ 
GRAM. 


2.  Socialism  in  Brief. — 8. 

(a)  What  is  Socialism? 

(b)  The  Most  Frequent  Objections  to  Socialism  An¬ 

swered. 

(c)  Definitions  of  Socialism. 

3.  Socialist  Organization  and  Vote. — 17. 

(a)  Statistics  on  Socialist  Party  Membership. 

(b)  Statistics  on  Socialist  Vote. 

(c)  .  Socialist  Vote,  Membership  and  Parliamentary  Rep¬ 


resentation  of  the  World. 


4.  Socialism  and  Its  Critics. — 22. 

(a)  Socialism  and  the  Catholic  Church. 

(b)  Socialism  vs.  Syndicalism. 

(c)  Industrialism  in  the  American  Federation  of  Labor. 


PART  II. 


THE  CAPITALIST  PARTIES— FUTILITY  OF  THEIR 


REMEDIES. 


1.  The  Republican  Party. — 35. 

(a)  Republican  Platform. 

(b)  Brief  History  of  the  Republican  Party. 

2.  The  Democratic  Party. — 43. 

(a)  Democratic  Platform. 

(b)  Brief  History  of  the  Democratic  Party. 

(c)  Comments  on  the  Democratic  Record. 

(d)  Democrats  Disfranchise  Workingmen. 

(e)  The  Democrats'  and  Woman  Suffrage. 

(/)  The  Democratic  Party  and  the  High  Cost  of  Living, 
(g)  Labor  Under  the  Democratic  Administration. 

3.  The  Progressive  Party. — 65. 

(a)  Progressive  Platform. 

(b)  Comments  on  the  Progressive  Party. 

(c)  West  Virginia  Under  a  Progressive  Governor. 

4.  The  Prohibition  Party. — 77. 

(a)  Prohibition  Platform. 


(c)  Attitude  of  the  Socialist  Party  on  the  Liquor  Prob- 


(d)  Attitude  of  Some  European  Socialist  Parties  on  the 
Liquor  Problem. 


(e)  Intemperance  Not  the  Chief  Cause  of  Poverty 

IT)  Hranrpc  T?  o _ •  i; _ 


(f)  Frances  E.  Willard  on  Socialism. 


-5*  The  Futility  of  the  Old  Partv  Rem^i*«_8i 


PART  III. 


1.  Concentration  in  General. — 93. 

(a)  The  Trusts. 

(b)  Methods  of  Concentration. 

(c)  Distribution  of  Wealth. 

(d)  Great  Fortunes  and  Big  Incomes 

(e)  America  Ruled  of  Men. 


lv 


2.  Concentration  in  the  Ownership  of  Natural  Resources. — 99. 

(a)  Concentration  in  the  Ownership  of  Land. 

(b)  Concentration  in  the  Ownership  of  Water-Power. 

(c)  Concentration  in  the  Ownership  of  Timber. 

(d)  Cohc'eVitSrjation  in  the  Ownership,  of  Oil. 

(e)  (  Concentration  in  the  Ownership  of  Mineral  Re¬ 

sources. 

3.  Concentration  in  the  Ownership  of  the  Means  of  Produc¬ 

tion  and  Distribution. — 114. 

(a)  Concentration  in  Manufacture. 

(b)  Concentration  in  Mercantile  Establishments. 

(c)  Concentration  in'  American  Railways. 

(d)  Concentration  in  the  Ownership  of  Telegraphs. 

(e)  Concentration  in  the  Ownership  of  Telephones. 

4.  The  Money  Trust. — 120. 

5.  Is  There  a  Retailers’  Trust? — 124. 

6.  The  Effects  of  Concentration. — 126. 

(a)  Juggling  With  Prices.  '/l  ■'■£*- 

(b)  Trust  Prices  at  Home  and  Abroad. 

(c)  Enormous  Dividends. 

PART  IV. 

LABOR  UNDER  CAPITALISM. 

1.  Number  of  Persons  Employed  in  Specified  Occupations. — 134. 

2.  The  Division  Into  Classes. — 134. 

(a)  The  Three  Principal  Classes.  .  , 

(b)  The  Workers  Classified  by  Occupations. 

(c)  Workers  and  Idlers. 

(d)  Unnecessary  Occupations. 

(e)  What  Chance  Has  a  Workingman  to  Become  a 

Capitalist? 

3.  Hand  Labor  vs.  Machine  Labor. — 139. 

4.  Exploitation  of  Labor. — 140. 

(a)  Difficulty  in  Securing  Reliable  Information. 

(b)  The  Measure  of  Exploitation. 

(c)  The  Worker’s  Share. 

(d)  Henry  Ford  Proves  Correctness  of  Socialist  Posi¬ 

tion. 

(e)  Big  Wages  that  Could  Be  Paid. 

(f)  Exploitation  in  Mines. 

5.  Wages  and  the  Cost  of  Living. — 148. 

(a)  The  Workingman’s  Budget. 

(b)  What  Is  a  Living  Wage?  ;  .  .  ' 

(c)  Do  American  Workingmen  Obtain  a  Living  Wage: 

(d)  An  Interesting  Comparison. 

(e)  Earnings  of  Wage  Workers  in  Manufactures. 

(f)  Wages  of  Woolen  Operatives. 

(g)  Pay  of  Railwaymen. 

(h)  Wages  in  Mines  and  Quarries. 

(i)  Salaries  and  Wages  in  Fisheries. 

(j)  How  Much  Does  the  Farmer  Get? 

6.  The  Increase  in  the  Cost  of  Living. — 153. 

(a)  Relative  Prices  of  the  Principal  Articles  of  Foof 

1890-1913.  v  1 

(b)  Increase  in  the  Cost  of  Food  and  Other  Commodi 

ties,  1897-1910.  .  » 

(c)  Per  Cent  of  Increase  or  Decrease  in  Retail  PriceFf 

of  the  Principal  Articles  of  Food. 

(d)  Retail  Prices  in  a  Typical  Store  in  Spring,  1910,  and 

Spring,  1900. 

7.  Is  the  Advance  in  Wages  Keeping  Pace  With  the  Increased 

Cost  of  Living? — 156. 

(a)  The  Government’s  Opinion. 

(b)  An  Employer’s  Opinion. 

(c)  The  Decline  in  Steel  Wages. 

(d)  Summary  of  Statistics-Relative  Increase  in  Los- 

of  Living  and  in  Wages. 


T 


8. 


9. 


11. 


12. 


Labor  Conditions, — 157. 

(a)  Labor  Conditions  in  the  Steel  Mills. 

(b)  Industrial  Accidents. 

(c)  Occupational  Diseases. 

(d)  Mortality 

(e)  Unemployment. 

Child  Labor.— 168. 

(a)  Extent  of  Child  Labor. 

(b)  Evils  of  Child  Labor  Described. 

(c)  Damning  Evidence  of  Child  Slavery  in  the  South, 

(d)  Street  Trades. 

(e)  Child  Labor  Legislation. 

Women  Workers, — 174. 

(a)  Women  Workers  in  the  United  States — By  Occupa¬ 

tion.  i 

(b)  Women  Displace  Men. 

(c)  Causes  Which  Led  to  Woman’s  Position  in  Industry, 

(d)  Women’s  Wages. 

Organized  Labor. — 1/8. 

(a)  Extent  and  Numbers. 

(b)  The  Growth  of  Socialism  in  the  Trades  Union 

Movement. 

(c)  Women’s  Trade  Union  Organizations. 

(d)  Strikes  and  Lockouts. 

(e)  Labor  Decisions  and  Injunctions. 

(f)  Old  Parties  Say  Unions  Are  Trusts. 

(g)  Catholic  Unions  of  Germany. 

(h)  Is  This  a  Threat  to  Organize  Catholic  Unions? 

(i)  The  Private  Armies  of  Capital. 

(j)  The  State  Constabulary  of  Pennsylvania. 

Three  Great  Labor  Struggles  of  1912-14. — 200. 

(a)  West  Virginia  Coal  Miners’  Strike. 

(b)  Michigan  Copper  Miners’  Strike. 

(c)  Colorado  Coal  Miners’  Strike. 


PART  V.  \ 

THE  EVIL  EFFECTS  OF  CAPITALISM. 

Concentration  of  Wealth  and  Power. — 218. 

(a)  Wealth  of  Kings  in  America  and  Elsewhere  Com¬ 

pared. 

Poverty. — 218. 

.  (a)  Extent  of  Poverty  in  the  United  States. 

(b)  The  Problem  of  Poverty  in  Chicago. 

(c)  Causes  of  Poverty. 

Housing. — 222. 


Tenure  of  Homes  in  the  United  States. 

(b)  Home  Ownership  by  States. 

(c)  Home  Ownership  in  the  Principal  Cities 

United  States. 

(d)  Overcrowding. 

(e)  Housing  and  Health. 

4.  Political  Corruption. — 227. 

(a)  The  Invisible  Government. 

(b)  The  Cause  of  Corruption. 

(c)  Big  Business  and  the  Bench. 

(d)  Courts  Obstruct  Social  Progress. 

(e)  Corrupting  the  Church. 

5.  Commercial  Frauds. — 235. 

(a)  Watered  Stock. 

(b)  Adulteration  of  Foods. 

(c)  Fraudulent  Weight  and  Measures. 

(d)  Robbing  the  Government  on  Carrying  Mail. 

6.  Waste. — 241. 

(a)  Loss  from  Inefficient  Equipment. 

(b)  Loss  from  Idle  Factories. 

(c)  Useless  “Superintendents.” 

(d)  Loss  from  Idle  Land. 

(e)  Antiquated  Farming  Methods. 

(f)  The  Waste  of  Advertising. 

(g)  The  Waste  of  Unemployment. 


in  the 


Vi 


(h)  The  Waste  of  Human  Life. 

(i)  Extending  Average  Productive  Life  20  Years 
(j;  Summary  of  Wasted  Wealth. 

(k)  Mineral  Waste  One  Million  Dollars  a  Day. 

7.  Commercial  Failures  in  United  States. _ 246 

8.  Underfeeding. — >2^6. 

/,  Between  Income  and  Underfeeding. 

(b)  Underfed  School  Children. 

(c)  Other  Cities. 

9.  Illiteracy. — 248. 

(a)  Illiteracy  in  General. 

(b)  School  Attendance  in  the  United  States. 

10.  Disease  and  Death. — 249. 

(a)  %p.!c!rable  Conditions  of  Health  Among  School 
Children. 

(b)  Infant  Mortality. 

11.  Panics. — 250. 

12.  Crime,  Insanity  and  Suicides.— 252. 

(a)  Crime. 

(b)  Suicides  and  Insanity. 

(c)  One  Girl’s  Case. 

(d)  White  Slave  Traffic. 

13.  Prostitution  and  White  S  lavery.— 254. 

Extent  of  Prostitution  in  the  United  States. 
rA5'  Prostitution  an  Economic  Pfoblcm. 

14.  Divorce  and  Marriage. — 262. 

15.  Intemperance. — 263. 

^States115^011  ^c°k°^c  Beverages  in  the  United 

(b)  Attitude  of  Socialist  Parties  Toward  the  Liquor 
Problem.  M 

16.  Immigration.— 265. 

(a)  Extent  and  Causes  of  Immigration. 

(b)  Immigration  by  Countries. 

17.  Suppression  of  the  Freedom  of  Speech  and  of  the 

Press.— 267. 

StOW  ^hey  Stole  Hampton’s  Magazine. 

(b)  The  Newspaper  and  the  Trust. 

(c)  Free  Speech  in  Colorado. 

(d)  Wendell  Phillips  on  Free  Speech. 

18.  War  and  Militarism.— 270. 

(a)  Numerical  Strength  of  Army. 

(b)  Expenditure  for  Army,  Navy,  Pensions  and  Num¬ 

ber  of  Pensioners. 

(c)  Summary  of  Expenditures. 

(d)  Estimate  of  Actual  Cost  of  Militarism. 

(e)  More  than  Half  of  Government  Expenditures  for 

War. 

(f)  The  Cost  of  a  Battleship. 

(g)  The  Waste  of  War. 

(h)  Socialists  and  War. 

(i)  What  War  Costs  in  Human  Life. 

(j)  The  Economic  Causes  of  War — The  Krupp  Gun 

Case— Big  Business  and  Militarism— Armor  Plate 
Scandal. 

,  (k)  The  Mexican  War. 


PART  VI. 

SOCIALISM  THE  WAY  OUT. 

1.  Reform  Forces  that  Make  for  Socialism.— 282. 

(a)  Municipal  Ownership. 

(b)  Public  Ownership  of  Railways. 

(c)  Public  and  Private  Ownership'  of  Telegraph  and 

Telephone  Lines. 

(d)  Uncle  Sam  in  Panama. 

(e)  Is  Uncle  Sam  Becoming  a  Socialist? 


2.  Labor  Forces  Making  for  Socialism. — 307. 

(a)  Report  of  Committee  on  Labor  Organizations. 

(b)  Labor-union  Membership  of  the  World. 

3.  The  Co-operatives  and  Mutuals. — 308. 

^  (a)  Statistics  of  Distributive  Societies. 

(b)  The  Development  of  Wholesale  Co-operation. 

(c)  The  Co-operative  Movement  in  the  United  States. 

4.  The  Socialist  Party  and  Its  Program. — 310. 

(a)  Socialist  Officials  in  the  United  States. 

(b)  Socialist  Municipal  Program — Labor  Measures — 

What  Socialists  Have  Done  in  Municipalities — 
Commendations  by  Non-Socialists. 

(c)  The  Socialist  State  Program — State  Legislative 

Work. 

(d)  The  Socialist  National  Program. 

5.  Progress  of  Woman’s  Suffrage. — 330. 


APPENDIX— 332-334. 

1.  Area  and  Population  of  the  United  States. 

2.  Statistics  of  the  United  States. 

3.  Expenditures  for  Education,  1907-8;  1908-9. 

4.  Urban  and  Rural  Population. 

5.  Cost  of  Government. 

6.  New  Wealth  Produced  Annually  in  the  United  States. 

7.  Railway  Capital,  1888  to  1911. 

8.  Railway  Dividends,  1888  to  1911. 

9.  Size  of  Families  in  the  United  States. 


INDEX 


A 

Absentee  landlordism,  100-101. 

Accident  insurance,  on  railways, 
291;  socialist  municipal  pro¬ 
gram  on,  312;  socialist  state 
program  on,  320;  socialist 
legislative  measure  for,  332; 

Accidents,  industrial,  158-164; 
deaths  by,  164. 

Administrations,  socialist,  in 
municipalities,  313-319. 

Adulteration  of  foods,  238-239. 

Advertising,  waste  of,  243. 

Agriculture,  Democratic  party 
on,  50;  Progressive  party  on, 
68-69;  concentration  in,  102- 
106;  revolution  In  methods 
of,  104-105;  capitalists  in,  135; 
middle  class  in,  135;  wage 
earners  in,  134,  135,  136,  137; 
hand  and  machine  labor  In, 
140;  socialist  state  program 
on,  320;  cost  of  U.  S.  Depart¬ 
ment  of,  333.  (See  also 
Farms.) 

Am'erican  Federation  of  Labor, 
industrial  unionism  in,  33-34. 

American  Telegraph  and  Tele¬ 
phone  Co.,  profits  of,  148; 
number  of  employes,  148;  av¬ 
erage  weekly  wage  per  em¬ 
ploye,  148;  average  weekly 
wage  that  could  be  paid,  148. 
(See  also  Telegraph;  Tele¬ 
phone.) 

Armor  plate,  “competitive”  bids 
on,  276-277;  cost  to  make,  277; 
excessive  profit  on,  277,  278; 
worthless  sold  to  government, 
279. 

Army,  Socialist  party  resolu¬ 
tion  on  propaganda  in,  5-6; 
regular,  270;  expenditures  for 
by  year,  270;  appropriations 
for,  333.  (See  also  Militar¬ 
ism;  War.) 


B 

Banking,  and  currency,  Repub¬ 
lican  party  on,  38-39;  Demo¬ 
cratic  party  on,  47;  Progres¬ 
sive  party  on,  70;  total  power, 
124;  interests  responsible  for 
wars,  275-276. 

Banks,  Democratic  party  on 
agricultural,  47;  interlocking 
directorates  of,  120;  concen¬ 
tration  in,  118,  120-124; 

profits  of,  133. 

Battleships,  cost  of,  271;  armor 
plate  for,  276-279. 

Berger,  Victor  L.,  on  the  fu¬ 
tility  of  old  party  remedies, 
81-83;  on  tariff  and  labor,  82; 
on  relative  share  of  worker, 
82;  on  unemployment,  82-83; 
work  of  In  congress,  325-329. 

Bethlehem  Steel  Corporation, 
capitalization  of,  145;  bonded 
for,  145;  profits  of,  145;  num¬ 
ber  of  employes,  146;  average 
wage  of  workers,  146;  aver¬ 
age  wage  that  could  be  paid, 
146-147. 

‘‘Big  Business,”  and  political 
corruption,  227-229;  cause  of 
corruption,  229-230;  and  the 
bench,  230-233;  and  free 
press,  267-268;  and  free 
speech,  269;  and  militarism, 
276-277.  (See  also  Capitalism; 
Trusts.) 

Budget  for  workingmen’s  fami¬ 
lies,  148-149. 

Business  rules  industry,  96-99; 
failures,  246;  failures  due  to 
panics,  251-252.  (See  also 
‘‘Big  Business,”  Capitalism.) 


vlil 


Calumet  &  Hecla  (Michigan) 
mine,  dividends  of,  128,  210; 
salaries  of  operators  and 
managers,  128,  211. 

Calumet  strike.  (See  Michigan 
Strike.) 

Campaign  contributions,  Re¬ 
publican  party  on,  39;  to  Re¬ 
publican  party,  42-43;  Demo¬ 
cratic  party  on,  45-46;  Pro¬ 
gressive  party  on,  67. 
Capitalism  in  England,  22; 
old  parties  political  expres¬ 
sion  of,  81-83;  concentration 
under,  93-133;  labor  under, 
134  if.;  private  armies  of,  192- 
200;  evil  effects  of,  218  ff.; 
poverty  under,  2 18-222;  hous¬ 
ing  under,  222-227;  corruption 
under,  227-235;  commercial 
Jrauds  of’  235-238 ; ' waste  of, 
241-245;  disease  and  death 

wnoco249'250’  panics  under, 
250-252;  crime  under,  252-254- 
social  evil  under,  254-262;  in¬ 
temperance  under,  263;  and 
war,  275-280;  in  Mexico,  281. 
CSee  also  “Big  Business;” 
Concentration;  Trusts.) 
Capitalists,  in  class  divisions  of 
workers,  134-135;  number  of 
greater,  136;  number  of  less- 
er,  136;  workers’  chances  to 
become,  138-139. 

Cathonc  defense  of  socialism 

^rli?"*22*?5’  P™est  denies  so¬ 
cialists  stand  for  “free  love  ” 
35;  early  church  fathers  on 
common  ownership  of  prop¬ 
erty*  25-26j,  priest  defends 
economic  determinism,  26; 
?-r*  /ohn  A-  Ryan  admits 
soundness  of  theory  of  eco¬ 
nomic  determinism,  26;  com- 
of  goods  and  wives 
contended  for  by  monk  Camip- 
anella,  27;  unions  in  Ger¬ 
many,  186-192. 

Charity,  ineffectual,.  219-221. 
Ch4lId,n1Pb21r’q  Socialist  party  on, 
319>  Democratic  party 
record  on,  56,  64,  65;  Progres¬ 
sive  party  on,  68;  Prohibition 
party  on,  77;  in  classes  of  oc- 

i7?aiSns'  134 '  by  s'tates,  168, 
173-174;  number  of  bv  aae 
periods,  168;  percentage  of 
total  child  population,  169; 

169  i°7fi*  1i7991I2;  {n  the  south> 
i7o\  street  trades, 

IJ.3>  legislation,  173;  social- 

agaiMt.  sir*  measures 

cli!!?irr,enn’„Soclt,,!ft  par‘y 

lution  on  military  education 

6uv  average  height  and 
according  to  hous¬ 
ing,  227,  underfeeding  and 
SslnJtt2‘tlon  of  school,  246- 
ilRteracy  of,  248;  school 
attendance  of,  248-249;  phy- 
sical  defects  of  school,  249. 
Church,  corruption  of,  233-235; 
failure  of  to  do  its  social 
fnuty-  234-235 ;  Episcopal  dom- 
inated  by  J.  p.  Morgan,  235. 

skP~s'uti°n  ‘n  °Wner- 

Coal  Mines.  (See  Mines.) 
Colorado  strike,  212-217;  under 
Democratic  administration,  63- 

in  S:Tde,rn4s  of  miners 

Vi  ft -I’  Ludlow  tragedy,  214- 

tlon  onM2ai6-S2t17Party  reSOlu' 

Commendations  of  socialist  mu- 
gimpal  administrations,  317- 

Coin.mercial,  frauds,  235-241 
nrni\feS'  24.6-  251-252;  aspects 
of  the  social  evil,  255. 
Concentration,  93-133;  in  gen¬ 
eral,  93-99;  methods  of,  93- 


94;  of  wealth,  96,  218;  in  in¬ 
dustry,  96-99;  in  land  owner¬ 
ship,  99-107;  in  agriculture, 
102-106;  in  water  power,  107- 
110;  in  public  utilities,  110; 
in  timber,  111-112;  in  oil,  112- 
113;  in  coal,  113;  in  iron,  114; 
in  means  of  production  and 
distribution,  114-120;  in  man¬ 
ufactures,  114-116;  in  liquor 
distilling  establishments,  115; 
in  smelting  and  refining  cop¬ 
per  establishments,  115;  itn 
tobacco  manufactures,  115;  in 
retail  stores,  116-118,  124-126; 
in  railroads,  118-119;  in  tele¬ 
graph,  119;  in  telephone,  120; 
in  money  and  credit,  120-124; 
effects  .of,  126-133;  tends  to 
make  a  wage  worker  remain 
a  wage  worker,  138-139.  (See 
also  Capitalism;  Monopoly; 
Trusts.) 

Congress,  Victor  L.  Berger  in, 
325-330. 

Conservation,  Republican  party 
on,  39;  Democratic  party  on, 
47-48,  49-50;  Progressive  par¬ 
ty  on,  71,  72;  Prohibition  par¬ 
ty  on,  77;  socialist  state  pro¬ 
gram  on,  320. 

Constabulary  of  Pennsylvania, 
196-200.  (See  also  Gunmen.) 
Constitution,  U.  S.,  Socialist 
party  on  amending  of,  4,  320; 
Progressive  party  on  amend¬ 
ing  of,  66. 

Contract  system,  failure  of  in 
Panama,  305;  socialist  state 
program  on,  320. 

Convict  labor,  Socialist  party 
on,  4,  320;  Democratic  party 
on  bill  against  products  of, 
64;  abolition  of  contract  sys¬ 
tem  favored  by  Progressive 
party,  68. 

Cooperation,  308-310;  In  world, 
308;  wholesale,  308-309;  in  U. 
S.,  309-310;  socialist  legisla¬ 
tive  measure  covering,  323. 
Cooperative  stores  in  Michigan 
strike,  206.  (See  also  Coop¬ 
eration.) 

Copper,  concentration  in  own¬ 
ership  of,  98,  115,  116;  divi¬ 
dends  of  mining  companies, 
128;  mining  requires  skill, 
204-205.  (See  also  Mines.) 
Corruption,  political,  227-233; 
“big  business”  the  cause  of, 
229-230;  of  the  courts,  230-233; 
of  the  church,  233-235. 

Cost  of  living,  advancing  under 
capitalism,  9;  to  be  reduced 
under  socialism,  10;  Republi¬ 
can  party  on,  38;  Democratic 
party  on,  44;  tariff  and,  60- 
63;  advance  under  democratic 
administration,  60-63;  Pro¬ 
gressive  party  on,  69;  is  there 
a  retailers’  trust?  124;  fur¬ 
ther  evidence  of  a  retailers’ 
trust,  124-126;  workingmen’* 
budget,  148-149;  wages  and, 
148-153;  increase  In  ,  153-155; 
is  advance  in  wages  keeping 
pace  with  increased?  156;  rel¬ 
ative  increase  In  and  wages, 
157;  relation  between  work¬ 
er’s  income  and  underfeeding, 
246;  in  Panama,  304,  305-306. 
(See  also  Retail  Prices.) 
Courts,  Socialist  party  on,  4,  5; 
Democratic  party  on,  48-49; 
Progressive  party  on,  ,67 : 
ruled  by  “big  business,”  230- 
233;  obstruct  social  progress, 
232-233. 

Crime,  a  result  of  bad  housing, 
226;  extent  of,  252;  cost  of, 
252,  254;  Intemperance  and, 

253;  prisoners  by  occupation, 


iz 


253;  literacy  of  prisoners,  25 S; 
by  class,  253;  increasing-,  253- 

254. 

D 

Death  rate,  from  tuberculosis  in 
various  occupations,  165;  from 
various  causes  by  occupation 
groups,  165-166;  general,  249; 
infant,  249-250;  general  and 
‘infant,  by  class,  250. 

Deaths,  by  accidents,  164;  from 
wars,  275.  (See  also-  Fatali¬ 
ties;  Mortality.) 

Definitions,  of  socialism,  9,  15- 
16;  of  individualism,  16;  of 
surplus  value,  16;  of  commod¬ 
ity,  16;  of  class  struggle,  16- 
17;  of  materialistic  conception 
of  history,  17;  of  syndicalism, 
28;  of  the  word  “sabotage,’' 
30-31. 

Demands,  industrial  and  politi¬ 
cal,  of  Socialist  party,  4.  (See 
also  Platform;  Program;  So¬ 
cialism;  Socialist  Party.) 

Democratic  administration,  cost 
of  living  advances  under,  60- 
63;  labor  struggles  under,  63- 
65;  West  Virginia  strike  un¬ 
der,  200:  Colorado  strike  un¬ 
der,  212. 

Democratic  party,  Socialist  par¬ 
ty  on,  1-2,  9-10;  presidential 
vote,  21;  platform,  43-52; 
brief  history  of,  52-56;  rec¬ 
ord  of,  on  child  labor,  56, 
64,  65;  on  peonage,  56;  on 

vagrancy  laws,  56-57;  on  un¬ 
just  election  laws,  57;  on 
landlordism,  57;  on  labor 
unions,  57;  in  the  south,  56- 
/57,  58-59;  in  the  north,  57; 
and  poll  tax,  57,  58-59;  and 
woman  suffrage,  59;  and  cost 
of  living,  60-63;  and  tariff,  60- 
63;  Progressive  party  on,  66; 
sham  issues  of,  81-83. 

Detective  agencies,  private,  em¬ 
ploy  men  of  criminal  nature, 
193-194;  strike  breaking  ac¬ 
tivities  of,  194-196;  socialist 
state  program  on,  319.  (See 
also  Gunmen.) 

Direct  employment,  in  Panama, 
304-306;  socialist  state  pro¬ 
gram  on,  320. 

Direct  legislation,  ‘Socialist  par¬ 
ty  on,  4,  320,  328;  socialist 
legislative  measures  on,  322. 

Disease,  a  result  of  bad  hous¬ 
ing,  226;  among  school  chil¬ 
dren,  249.  (See  also  Occupa¬ 
tional  Diseases;  Tuberculosis.) 

Distribution,  means  of,  how  to 
be  acquired,  13;  concentra¬ 
tion  in  ownership  of,  114-120. 

Dividends,  128-133;  mining  com¬ 
panies,  128;  Calumet  &  He  cl  a 
(Michigan)  mine,  128,  210; 

express  companies,  128-129; 
railroads,  129-131;  Standard 
Oil.  Company,  131-132,  218. 

(See  also  Earnings;  Incomes; 
Profits;  Wealth.) 

Divorce,  262-263. 

Domestic  and  personal  service, 
number  of  wage  earners  In, 
134,  135,  136,  137;  middle  class 
in,  135. 

Dues,  Socialist  party,  amount 
of  by  states,  17-18. 

E 

Earnings,  railroads,  118;  of  U. 
S.  Steel  Corporation,  132.  (See 
also  Dividends;  Incomes;  Prof¬ 
its;  Wealth.) 

Economic,  aspects  and  causes  of 
social  evil,  255-262;  causes  of 
war,  275-276. 


Economic  determinism,  defin¬ 
ition  of,  17;  defended  by 
catholic  priest,  26;  soundness 
of  theory  admitted  by  Dr. 
John  A.  Ryan,  26. 

Education,  Socialist  party  on, 
5;  Socialist  party  resolution 
on  military,  6;  socialist  vote 
in  proportion  to  facilities  for, 
22;  underfeeding  of  school 
children,  246-248;  illiteracy  of 
school  children,  248;  school 
attendance,  248-249;  socialist 
school  officials,  311;  socialist 
municipal  program  on,  312- 
313;  socialist  administrations 
develop,  317;  socialist  state 
program  on,  320;  socialist  leg¬ 
islative  measures  on,  323;  ex¬ 
penditures  for  in  U.  S.,  332. 
(See  also  Free  Hunches,  Free 
Text  Books,  School.) 

Eight  hour  day.  Progressive 
party  on,  68;  socialist  mu¬ 
nicipal  program  on,  312;  se¬ 
cured  by  socialists  in  munici¬ 
palities,  313,  315;  socialist 

state  program  on,  320;  social¬ 
ist  legislative  measures  for, 
321,  222;  socialist  measures  in 
congress  for,  326.  (See  also 
Hours  of  Labor.) 

Elected  officials,  Socialist  party, 
310-311. 

Election  laws.  (See  Poll  Tax.) 

Electric  light  and  ipower,  mu¬ 
nicipal  ownership  of,  283.  (See 
also  Power.) 

Electric  railways,  Income  of, 
147;  number  of  employes  in, 
147;  average  yearly  wage  of 
employes,  147;  average  yearly 
wage  that  could  be  paid,  147. 

England,  land  ownership  in,  22; 
private  ownership  of  indus¬ 
tries  in,  22;  poverty  in,  22. 

Exploitation  of  labor,  ended  un¬ 
der  socialism,  10;  census  fig¬ 
ures  vague  on,  140-141;  meas¬ 
ure  of  in  manufacturing  es¬ 
tablishments,  141-142;  in  Beth¬ 
lehem  Steel  Corporation,  145- 
146;  in  United  States  Steel 
Corporation,  146-147;  in  elec¬ 
tric  railways,  147;  in  Ameri¬ 
can  Telegraph  &  Telephone 
Co.,  147-148;  in  mines,  148. 
(See  also  Labor;  Wage  Earn¬ 
ers;  Workers.) 

Express  companies’  dividends, 
128-129. 


F 

Factories,  Socialist  party  on  in¬ 
spection  of,  4,  312;  waste 

from  inefficiently  equipped, 
241-242;  waste  from  idle,  242; 
waste  from  useless  superin¬ 
tendents,  242;  inspection  of 
by  Milwaukee  socialist  ad¬ 
ministration,  314;  socialist 
measures  in  state  legislatures 
on  ventilation  of,  322. 

Failures,  commercial,  246;  due 
to  panics,  251-252. 

Families,  size  of,  334. 

Farm  tenantry,  under  capital¬ 
ism,  14;  under  socialism,  14; 
increasing,  101-102,  103;  In 

various  states,  104,  105;  high 
rate  where  high  production, 
104. 

Farmers,  socialism  and,  13-14, 
106-107;  labor  incomes  of, 
105-106;  proposed  socialism 
program,  106-107;  incomes  of, 
152-153;  socialist  legislative 
measures  on  loans  to,  323. 

Farms,  under  capitalism,  14; 


Under  socialism,  14;  number 
of  large  increasing,  101;  free, 
102;  mortgaged,  102;  homes 
free,  102;  homes  mortgaged, 
102;  concentration  in  owner¬ 
ship  of,  102-106;  average  in¬ 
vestment  in,  105-106,  152' 

small  not  profitable,  106;  la¬ 
bor  on,  136,  140;  number  of, 
152;  value  of  daily  products, 
°r<?pS'  152  ’  expenses, 

io2,  rank  according  to  in¬ 
come,  153;  accidents,  163; 
waste  from  antiquated  meth¬ 
ods,  243;  socialist  legislative 
measure  on  safety  appliances 
on  shredders,  322.  (See  also 
Agriculture;  Land.) 

Fatalities,  in  steel  mills,  159- 
on  railroads,  160;  in  metal 
161»  162»  in  coal  mines, 
icq  vari?us  occupations, 
I63.  (See  also  Deaths;  In¬ 
dustrial  Accidents.) 

Fis^ertes, ^salaries  and  wages 

Food,  regulation  of  itrust,  88* 
wholesale  and  retail  prices 

?Vpric.es  Juggled, 
126-127,  destruction  of  to 
maintain  prices,  127;  retail 
prices  of,  by  principal  ar¬ 
ticles,  153-154;  percent  of  in¬ 
crease  or  decrease  in,  155;  re- 
tail  prices  of  in  typical  store, 
15o;  increase  in  cost  of,  155* 
adulteration  of,  238-239;  so¬ 
cialist  municipal  program  on 
inspection  of,  312. 

Ford  Motor  Co.,  143-145;  proves 
socialist  contention,  143;  av- 

?2fgie^Tvagre«.of  workers  in, 
143-145;  profits  of,  143-145 

Forests,  privately  owned.  111 
112;  publicly  owned,  112. 

Franchise  trusts,  94.  (See  also 
Electric  Light  Plants;  Street 
Railways;  Telegraph;  Tele¬ 
phone.) 

Frauds,  commercial,  235-241. 

"Free  love,”  under  socialism,"  13- 
socialists  do  not  stand  for,  25! 

Free  meals  at  schools,  socialist 
legislative  measure  on,  323. 
(See  also  Underfeeding.) 

Free  press,  Socialist  party  on 
4;  suppression  of,  267-268 

Free  speech,  Socialist  party  on 
4;  suppression  of,  269. 

Free  text  books,  socialist  mu¬ 
nicipal  program  on,  313;  so¬ 
cialist  state  program  on,  320. 

Freight  rates,  under  public  and 
private  ownership,  291-292. 
(See  also  Public  Ownership; 
Railroads.) 


Gas,  fifty  cent,  under  municipal 
ownership,  284. 

General  Electric  Company,  con¬ 
trols  water  power  and  pub¬ 
lic  utilities,  108,  110;  inter¬ 
acting  directorates  and 
combinations,  108,  110. 

General  strike,  30. 

Germany,  growth  of  socialism 
in,  10. 

Government,  expenditures  more- 
than  half  for  war,  271;  appro¬ 
priations,  333. 

Government  ownership.  (See 
Public  Ownership.) 

Graft,  eliminated  by  socialist 
administrations,  314-315,  317- 
319. 

Gunmen  of  industry,  192-195; 
in  West  Virginia  strike,  200- 
202;  in  Michigan  strike,  205- 
206,  207-209,  210,  211;  in  Colo¬ 
rado  strike,  212-216.  (See 
also  Militia.) 


H 

H267^268'S  Majg'azine«  ’  ruin  of, 

Hanford,  Judge,  case  of,  329. 

-Progressive  party  on, 

6i;uS'0USln?and’  227 5  of  school 
children  249;  under  socialist 
administrations,  316 

Holidays,  under  publii-c  owner¬ 
ship,  290-291.  (See  also 
Hours  --of  Labor.) 

HnSin£Pnlri  f°r  cities’  socialist 
municipal  program  on,  312- 

son.13,  ls^  state  program  on,’ 

ufes  oTS  leSrislatlve 

Homes,  under  socialism,  13;  un¬ 
der  capitalism,  13;  rented,  by 
%l%te9%223:  Principal  cities, 

;22:225-  owned,  by  states. 
Hi’  by  principal  cities,  223- 
v^or1fa?ed,  by  states, 
223,  by  principal  cities,  223- 
lll’  fo^ workers  in  Panama, 
305.  (See  also  Housing.) 

Hours  of  labor,  Socialist  party 
on,  4;  Progressive  party  on, 
68,  for  women  improved  by 
organization,  181;  reduced  on 
government  railways  290-  re¬ 
duced  by  socialist  administra- 
tions  313,  315-316;  socialist 
legislative  measures  on,  321- 
322;  socialist  measures  in 
congress  on,  326,  327.  (See 
also  Eight  Hour  Day;  Holi- 
aays. ) 

Housing,  222-227;  overcrowding, 
225-226;  bad  -  creates  disease, 
vice  and  crime,  226;  in  New 
York  City,  226;  and  health, 
227;  and  children,  227;  of  em¬ 
ployes  under  public  owner¬ 
ship,  291;  of  workers  in  Pan¬ 
ama,  305;  socialist  municipal 
program  on,  312.  (See  also 
Homes.) 

Human  life,  waste  of,  244-245' 
cost  of  in  war,  274-275. 


Ice  plants,  municipal,  socialist 
legislative  measures  on,  323. 

Illegitimacy  in  one  out  of  10 
births,  263. 

Illiteracy,  in  general,  248;  by 
oFcf'oA48’  s°bool  attendance, 
248-249;  of  prisoners,  253. 

Immigrant  women  and  the  so¬ 
cial  evil,  256. 

Immigration,  Socialist  party 
resolution  on  Dillingham  bill, 
7;  Republican  party  on,  39' 
Progressive  party  on,  73-74; 
extent  and  causes  of,  265-266; 
promoted  by  selfish  interests 
and  employers  of  unskilled 
labor,  265-266;  into  U.  S.  for 
fiscal  year  ended  June  30, 
266;  by  occupations,  266;  by 
countries,  266-267. 

Imports,  under  revised  tariff 
62-63. 

Incomes,  U.  S.,  96;  of  railroads, 
118;  of  electric  railways,  147; 
of.  farmers,  152-153.  (See  al¬ 
so  Dividends;  Earnings;  Prof¬ 
its;  Wages;  Wealth.) 

Industrial  accidents,  on  rail¬ 
roads,  mathematical  liability 
of,  138-139;  in  general,  158- 
164;  in  steel  mills,  158,  159; 
on  railroads,  160;  in  mines, 
161-162;  on  farms,  163;  fatal, 
164,  165.  * 

Industrial  depression,  250-252. 

Industrial  insurance,  Socialist 
party  on,  4;  under  socialism 
10. 


Industrial  unionism  in  A.'  F.  & 
L.,  33-34. 

Industry,  concentration  in,  96- 
99,  114-116;  causes  that  led 
to  woman’s  position  in,  176. 
(See  also  Capitalism;  Trusts.) 

Inefficiency,  loss  from,  241-242. 

Infant  mentality,  rate  of,  249; 
cause  of,  250;  in  tenements, 
250;  by  class,  250. 

Inheritance  tax,  socialist  state 
program  on,  320. 

Initiative,  referendum  and  re¬ 
call,  Socialist  paj-ty  on,  4;  so¬ 
cialist  state  program  on,  320; 
socialist  legislative  measures 
■on,  322;  socialist  measures  in 
congress  on,  328. 

Injunctions,  and  decisions,  la¬ 
bor,  185-186;  socialist  state 
program  on,  319;  socialist  leg¬ 
islative  measures  on,  322. 

Insanity,  254. 

Insurance,  state.  (See  State  In¬ 
surance.) 

Intemperance,  not  chief  cause 
of  poverty,  79,  221-222;  and 
crime,  253;  in  general,  263- 
265.  (See  also  Liquor  Ques¬ 
tion.) 

Interlocking  directorates,  in 
General  Electric  Company  and 
allied  Interests,  108;  in  rail¬ 
roads,  118;  in  money  trust, 
120;  in  banking  responsible 
for  wars,  275-276. 

''Invisible  government,”  227- 
229. 

Iron,  concentration  in  owner¬ 
ship  of,  113,  117. 

K 

Krupp  war  bribery,  276. 

L 

Labor,  Socialist  party  on  hours 
or,  4;  Democratic  party  on 
rights  of,  49;  struggles  under 
democratic  administration,  63- 
64,  200;  convict,  64;  Prohibi¬ 
tion  party  on  rights  of,  77; 
tariff  and,  82;  under  capital¬ 
ism,  134  ff.;  in  classes  of  oc¬ 
cupations,  134;  division  into 
classes  of,  134-135;  saving  by 
machinery,  139-140;  hand  and 
machine,  in  manufacture,  ag¬ 
riculture,  mining,  transpor¬ 
tation,  139-149;  exploitation 
of,  140-148;  in  manufacturing 
establishments,  141-142;  in 
Bethlehem  Steel  Corporation, 
145-146;  in  United  States  Steel 
Corporation,  146-147;  in  elec¬ 
tric  railways,  147;  in  Ameri¬ 
can  T.  &  T.  Co.,  147-148;  in 
mines,  148;  conditions  in  steel 
mills,  157-158;  injunctions  and 
decisions,  185-186;  productive 
life  of  extended,  244-245;  un¬ 
der  municipal  ownership,  284- 
287;  under  government  own¬ 
ership,  289-291;  forces  making 
for  socialism,  307  ff.;  social¬ 
ist  municipal  program  in,  313; 
improved  under  socialist  ad¬ 
ministrations,  315-316;  social¬ 
ist  legislative  measures  on, 
321-322;  socialist  measures  in 
congress  on,  325-327;  and  tar¬ 
iff,  325.  (See  also  Child  La¬ 
bor;  Convict  Labor;  Labor 
Unions;  Wage  Earner; 
Wages;  Workers.) 

Labor  legislation,  Progressive 
party  on,  68;  child,  173-174; 
declared  void  by  courts,  232- 
233;  socialist  municipal  pro¬ 
gram  bn,  312;  by  Milwaukee 
socialist  administration,  313, 


315,  316;  socialist  state  pro¬ 
gram  on,  319;  by  socialists  in 
state  legislatures,  321-322;  by 
socialist -in  congress,  325-327. 

Labor  unions,  Democratic  par¬ 
ty  antagonistic  to,  57;  num¬ 
ber  of  unemployed  in,  167; 
growth  of  socialism  in,  178- 
179;  are  trusts?  186;  catholic, 
Germany,  186-192;  benefits  of, 
244-245;  membership  of  in 
world,  308.  (See  also  Labor; 
Organized  Labor.) 

Land,  -ownership  under  social¬ 
ism,  14;  in  England,  22;  own¬ 
ership  -of,  99-107;  grants  to 
railroads,  99-100;  absentee 
landlordism,  100-101;  owned 
by  Standard  Oil  Co.,  101;  loss 
from  idle,  243;  socialist  mu¬ 
nicipal  program  on,  312;  so¬ 
cialist  state  program  on,  320; 
socialist  legislative  measures 
on,  322.  (See  also  Farms.) 

Lawrence  strike,  resolution  by 
Victor  L.  Berger  to  -investi¬ 
gate,  325. 

Legal  advice,  free,  socialist  mu¬ 
nicipal  program  -on,  312. 

Legislative  measures  advanced 
by  socialist,  319-324. 

Legislature,  state,  socialist 
members  of,  10-11;  socialist 
state  program  on  one  house, 
320. 

Life,  waste  of  human,  244-245; 
productive  extended,  244-245; 
cost  of  in  war,  274-275. 

Liquor,  concentration  in  own¬ 
ership  of,  115;  consumption 
of,  263-264.  (See  also  Liquor 
Question.) 

Liquor  question,  Socialist  party 
resolutions  on,  6-7,  265;  Pro¬ 
hibition  party  on,  77;  Social¬ 
ist  party,  various  countries, 
-on,  78,  264-265;  intemperance 
not  chief  cause  of  poverty, 
79,  221-222;  Frances  E.  Wil¬ 
lard  on  pbverty  and  intemper¬ 
ance,  80;  socialist  municipal 
program  on,  313. 

Loans  to  farmers,  socialist  leg¬ 
islative  measure  on,  323. 

Lobby,  National  Association  of 
Manufacturers,  64,  227-229; 

steamship,  64. 

Lockouts,  none  under  socialism, 
10;  strikes  and,  183. 

Ludlow  Tragedy,  214-216,  217. 

.  (See  also  Colorado  Strike.) 

Lunches,  school,  socialist  leg¬ 
islative  measure  on,  323. 


M 

Machinery,  labor  saving  by, 
139;  a  factor  in  decreasing 
cost  of  shoes,  139;  socialist 
legislative  measure  -on  pro¬ 
tection  of  dangerous,  322. 

Mail,  railroad,  charges  for  car¬ 
rying,  240-241;  socialist  meas¬ 
ure  in  congress  for  relief  of 
carriers,  326. 

Manufactures,  concentration 
in,  114-116;  value  of  products 
in,  114-115;  average  number 
of  wage  earners,  114-115;  la¬ 
bor  exploitation  in,  142;  av¬ 
erage  yearly  wage  of  worker 
in,  142;  average  production 
of  each  person  in,  142;  aver¬ 
age  profit  to  owners,  142; 
wages  in,  150'. 

Manufacturing,  and  mechanical 
pursuits,  wage  '  earners  in, 
134,  135,  136,  137;  capitalists 
in,  135;  middle  class  in,  135. 

Markets,  municipal,  288;  social¬ 
ist  municipal  program  on, 


Marriage,  under  capitalism,  13; 
under  socialism,  13;  statistics 
on,  262r263. 

Marx,  Karl,  on  commodity,  16; 
on  the  class  struggle,  16-17; 
on  the  materialistic  concep¬ 
tion  of  history,  17. 

Mayors,  socialist,  11,  310. 
Measure's,  weights  and,  fraudu¬ 
lent,  239-240. 

Mechanical  pursuits,  wage 
earners  in,  134,  135,  136,  137; 
capitalists  in,  135;  middle 
class  in,  135. 

Mercantile  establishments,  con¬ 
centration  in,  116-118. 

Mexico,  war  in,  279-281;  Social¬ 
ist  party  proclamation  on 
war  in,  279-280;  capitalistic 
investments  in,  281. 

Michigan  strike,  under  demo¬ 
cratic  administration,  64; 
gunmen  in,  195,  205,  206,  207- 
209,  210,  211;  demands  of 

miners,  204;  report  of  Social¬ 
ist  party  investigating  com¬ 
mittee  on,  204-211. 

Mididle  class,  in  class  division 
of  workers,  134-135;  in  va¬ 
rious  occupations,  135. 
Militarism,  war  and,  270-281; 
estimated  cost  of,  270;  and 
“Big  Business,”  276-277.  (See 
also  War.) 

Military  education  of  children, 
Socialist  party  resolution  on, 
0. 

Militia,  charged  with  responsi¬ 
bility  for  Ludlow  tragedy, 
215-216;  in  Colorado,  212-214, 
215,  216,  217;  statistics  on, 

270;  socialist  state  program’ 
on  use  of  as  strike  breakers, 
319.  (See  also  Gunmen.) 
Mills,  child  labor  in,  169,  170- 
171,  172. 

Milwaukee  socialist  adminis¬ 
tration,  313-317;  labor  meas¬ 
ures  of,  313;  commendations 
of,  317-319. 

Mine  guards.  (See  Gunmen; 
Militia.) 

Mineral  resources,  concentra¬ 
tion  in  ownership  of,  113- 
114;  waste,  245. 

Miners,  demands  of,  Michigan,' 
204;  demands  of,  Colorado, 
212;  socialist  legislative 
measures  on  safety  of,  322. 
Mines,  Socialist  party  on.  in¬ 
spection  of,  4;  concentration 
in  ownership  of  coal,  113; 
profits  (Calumet  &  Hecla) 
128,  210;  dividends  in  metal, 
128;  salaries  of  operators  and 
managers  (Calumet  &  Hecla), 
128,  211;  hand  and  machine 
labor  in,  140;  exploitation  of 
labor  in,  148;  wages  in,  151; 
number  employed  in  metal, 
161,  162;  accidents  in  metal, 
161,  162,  163;  number  em¬ 

ployed  in  coal,  162;  accidents 
in  coal,  162,  163;  unemploy¬ 
ment  in,  168;  child  labor  in, 
170,  172;  disregard  of  law  by 
companies,  210,  212;  public 

ownership  of  urged  by  social¬ 
ists,  217,  323. 

Minimum  wage,  Socialist  party 
on,  4;  Democratic  party  rec¬ 
ord  on,  64;  Progressive  party 
on,  68;  for  women,  176-177, 
262;  socialist  state  program 
on,  319. 

Money  Trust,  120-124. 

Morgan,  J.  P.,  &  Co.,  and  rail¬ 
road  control,  97;  combina¬ 
tion  with  Standard  Oil  Com¬ 
pany,  98;  of  septemvirate  of 
industry,  98;  dominant  inter¬ 
est  in  General  Electric  Com¬ 
pany,  108;  in  money  trust, 
120,  123;  estimated  resources 
of,  123-124;  controlled  Epis¬ 
copal  House  of  Bishops,  235; 


connected  with  Navy  League, 
276. 

Mortality,  164,  165-166;  princi¬ 
pal  causes  of  in  various  oc¬ 
cupations,  166;  infant,  cause 
and  rate  of,  249-250;  in  tene¬ 
ments,  250;  by  class,  250. 
(See  also  Death.) 

Mothers’  pensions,  socialist  leg¬ 
islative  measure  on,  323. 

Moyer,  Charles  H.,  shooting 
and  deportation  of  in  Michi¬ 
gan  strike,  195,  206,  209. 

Municipal,  Socialist  party  reso¬ 
lution  on  employes  under  so¬ 
cialist  administrations,  5;  so¬ 
cialist  officials,  10-11,  310; 

program  of  Socialist  party, 
311-313;  work  of  socialist  ad¬ 
ministrations,  313-319;  fi¬ 
nance,  under  socialist  admin¬ 
istrations,  316. 

Municipal  ownership,  282-288; 
extent  of,  282;  reduces  cost  of 
living,  282;  of  waterworks, 
282-283;  of  electric  light  and 
power,  283;  of  street  railways, 
283;  of  ice,  284;  of  gas,  284, 
287;  labor  under,  284;  profits 
of,  285,  288;  capitalist  con¬ 
trol  of,  286;  compared  to  pri¬ 
vate,  287;  socialist  municipal 
program  on,  312;  socialist 
legislative  measure  on  rights 
of  cities  to  establish,  323. 

Municipalities,  socialist  admin¬ 
istrations  in,  313-319. 

Murders,  164,  254. 

N 

National  Association  of  Manu¬ 
facturers,  64,  227-229. 

National  Guard,  in  Michigan 
strike,  205-206;  in  Colorado 
strike,  212-214.  (See  also 
Gunmen;  Militia.) 

Naturalization,  Socialist  party 
resolution  on  restriction  of, 
7-8. 

Navy,  Socialist  party  resolution 
on  propaganda  in,  5-6;  Re¬ 
publican  party  on,  40;  expen¬ 
ditures  for,  270;  agitation  for 
by  those  who  profit  from 
war,  275-276;  appropriations 
for,  333.  (See  also  Armor 
Plate;  Battleships;  Militar¬ 
ism;  War.) 

Newsboys,  Chicago,  173. 

Newspaper  and  the  trust,  268. 

Northern  Securities  Co.,  dis¬ 
solution  of,  83,  84,  87.  (See 
also  Regulation.) 

o 

Objections  to  Socialism  answer¬ 
ed,  11-15. 

Occupational  diseases,  164-165. 
(See  also  Diseases;  Tubercu¬ 
losis.) 

Occupations,  classes  of,  134- 
135;  unnecessary,  137-138; 
classed  according  to  fatali¬ 
ties  in  various,  163;  diseases 
in,  164-166;  proportion  of  un¬ 
employed  in  various,  167: 
women  workers  in,  134-175; 
prisoners  classified  by,  253; 
immigrants  classified  by,  266. 
(See  also  Labor;  Wage  Earn- 
ners;  Workers.) 

Oil,  concentration  in  ownership 
of,  98,  112-113.  (See  also 

Standard  Oil  Company.) 

Old  age  pensions,  Socialist 
party  on,  4;  under  socialism, 
10;  Democratic  party  on,  64; 
on  publicly  owned  railroads, 
291;  socialist  municipal  pro¬ 
gram'  on,  312;  socialist  state 
program  on,  320;  socialist 
legislative  measure  on,  323; 
socialist  measure  in  congress 
on,  326. 


xlil 


Organized  labor,  178-192;  ex¬ 
tent  of  by  country,  178; 
growth  of  socialist  sentiment 
in  movement,  178-179;  atti¬ 
tude  of  Socialist  party  on, 
307.  (See  also  Labor;  Labor 
Unions;  Women’s  Labor  Or¬ 
ganizations.)  „  J 

Overcapitalization,  of  Western 
Union  Telegraph  Co.,  119;  Its 
effect  on  wages,  144,  145;  of 
tobacco  trust,  235-236;  of 
steel  trust,  236-237. 
Overcrowding  as  a  factor  in 
poverty,  221,  225-226. 


P 


Panama,  304-306;  cost  of  living 
in,  304;  government  opera¬ 
tions  in,  305-306. 

Panics,  250-252. 

Parliamentary  representation, 
socialist,  in  Germany,  10;  in 
the  world,  21;  if  proportional, 
311. 

Passenger  rates,  railroad,  un¬ 
der  public  ownership,  291- 
292.  (See  also  Public  Own¬ 
ership;  Railroads.) 

Paupers  and  dependents,  210. 

Peace,  socialist  measures  in 
congress  on,  329. 

Pennsylvania  constabulary,  196- 
200.  (See  also  Gunmen.) 

Pensions,  old  age.  (See  Old 
Age  Pensions.) 

Pensions,  war,  270;  socialist 
legislative  measure  on  moth¬ 
ers',  323;  socialist  legislative 
measure  on  for  the  blind,  323. 

Peonage,  Democratic  party  rec¬ 
ord  on,  56;  in  Calumet  mines, 
210. 

Perkins,  Geo.  W.,  76. 

Personal  service,  wage  earners 
in,  134,  135,  136,  137;  middle 
class  in,  135. 

Picket,  socialist  state  program 
on  right  to,  319. 

Platform,  Socialist  party,  1-5; 
Republican  party,  35-41; 
Democratic  party,  43-52;  Pro¬ 
gressive  party,  65-75;  Prohi¬ 
bition  party,  77-78.  (See  also 
Program.) 

Playgrounds,  socialist  munici¬ 
pal  program'  on,  312,  313;  de¬ 
veloped  under  socialist  ad¬ 
ministrations,  317. 

Police,  socialist  municipal  pro¬ 
gram  on  use  of  for  strike 
breaking,  312;  socialist  state 
program  on  use  of  for  strike 
breaking,  319;  given  addi¬ 
tional  “offs”  by  Milwaukee 
socialist  administration,  313. 

Political  corruption,  227-235. 

Poll  tax,  Democratic  party  and, 
57,  58,  59. 

Population,  of  U.  S.,  332,  333. 

Post  office,  appropriations  for, 
333. 

Poverty,  in  England,  22;  in¬ 
temperance  not  chief  cause 
of,  79,  221-222;  a  cause  of  in¬ 
temperance,  80;  extent  of, 
218-221;  causes  of,  221-222; 
and  the  social  evil,  256,  258- 
260,  261,  262. 

President,  Socialist  party  on 
veto  power  of,  4;  vote  for,  21, 
78;  Democratic  party  on  sin¬ 
gle  term'  of,  46;  income  of 
compared  with  income  of  av¬ 
erage  worker  and  Rockefel¬ 
ler,  150. 

Prisoners,  number  confined,  252; 
committed  in  1910,  252;  cost 
of  housing,  252-253;  number 
committed  intemperate,  252; 
by  occupations,  253;  literacy 
of,  253;  by  classes,  253;  per¬ 
centage  of  native  born,  253. 
(See  also  Crime.) 


Production  and  distribution, 
means  of,  how  to  be  acquired, 
13;  concentration  in  owner¬ 
ship  of,  114-120. 

Production,  by  workers,  82;  av¬ 
erage  yearly  per  worker  in 
manufacturing  establish¬ 
ments,  142;  per  person,  143. 

Products,  value  of  in  manufac¬ 
turing,  114-115. 

Professional  service,  wage  earn¬ 
ers  in,  134,  135,  136,  137;  mid¬ 
dle  class  in,  135. 

Profits,  Calumet  &  Hecla  mine, 
128,  210;  railroads,  129-131; 
Standard  Oil  Company,  131- 
132;  United  States  Steel  Cor¬ 
poration,  132;  American  To¬ 
bacco  Co.,  132;  banks,  133; 
shoe  manufacturers,  139;  to 
manufacturers  through  ma¬ 
chine  methods,  139-140;  to 
proprietors  and  firm  mem¬ 
bers  of  manufacturing  estab¬ 
lishments,  142;  Bethlehem 
Steel  Corporation  ,145-146,  147; 
United  States  Steel  Corpora¬ 
tion,  146-147;  from  social  evil, 
254;  and  low  wages  to  women 
in  Sears,  Roebuck  &  Co.,  262. 
(See  also  Dividends;  Earn¬ 
ings;  Incomes;  Wealth.) 

Program,  Socialist  party,  1912, 
3;  constructive,  11;  proposed 
farmers,  106-107;  municipal, 
310-319;  state,  319-324;  na¬ 
tional,  325-330.  (See  also 
Platform;  Socialism;  Socialist 
Party.) 

Progressive  party,  stands  for 
“regulated”  capitalism,  9-10; 
presidential  vote,  21;  plat¬ 
form,  65-75;  a  “corrective  to 


c*  i  o  1  l  o  99  1  —1  A  *  WT  Vl  V 


ized,  76. 

Prohibition.  (See  Intemper¬ 
ance;  Liquor  Question.) 

Prohibition  Party,  presidential 
vote,  21,  78;  platform, .  77-78. 

Property,  private,  socialism  on, 
9;  under  socialism,  12;  early 
catholic  church  fathers  on 
common  ownership  of,  25-26. 

Proportional  representation,  So¬ 
cialist  party  on,  4;  congress¬ 
men  each  party  is  entitled  to 
under,  311.  .  „  , 

Prostitution.  (See  Social  Evil.) 

Public  health.  (See  Health.) 

Public  ownership,  of  mines 
urged  by  socialists,  217,  323; 
of  railroads,  288-298;  of  tele¬ 
graph  and  telephone,  298-303; 
in  Panama,  304-306-;  of  rail¬ 
roads,  socialist  legislative 
measure  on,  323.  (See  also 
Mines;  Panama;  Railroads; 
Telegraph;  Telephone.) 

Public  utility  corporations,  con¬ 
solidations  of,  110;  control  of 
by  General  Electric  and  re¬ 
lated  and  subsidiary  com¬ 
panies,  110;  under  Milwaukee 
socialist  administration,  316- 
317. 

Pujo  investigation  of  money 
trust,  120-214. 


Q 

Quarries,  concentration  in  own¬ 
ership  of,  114;  wages  in,  151; 
fatalities  in,  162. 

R 

Railroads,  concentration  in 
ownership  of,  94,  97,  98-99, 
118-119,  1219-131;  dividends, 

earnings,  income  and  profits 
of,  97,  118-119,  129-131,  334; 
securities  of,  99;  land  grants 
to,  99-100;  manufacture  of 
cars  controlled  by  corpora¬ 
tions,  116;  number  of,  118; 
aggregate  of  business,  118; 


xiv 


interlocking  directorates,  118* 
foo°.wJ5’  118 1  mileage,  118, 
?,8  8, 1  n ?? P ^ s e?’  118 »  employes' 
liability  to  be  killed,  138- 
worker  s  chance  to  become  a 
capitalist,  138-139;  wages, 
151,  accidents,  160;  watered 
chnr^t’  |37"238 1  exorbitant 
5?nr#iis.  f0r  ,  carrying  mail, 
240-241,  socialist  legislative 
■measure  on  full  crew  322- 
capital,  334,  (See  also’ Rail-’ 

Reaguiat?oU„b“C  °™rsl“P  of^ 
profits  <7"S“P  & 

vantages  to  labor,  289-290- 
oq7-aniaf?S  t0  the  Public,  291- 
292  ’  2Q3>,etf  service  under, 
2-293  >  fewer  accidents  and 

latfnn  Snrnfier’  293  »  manipu- 
lation  of  finance  and,  293- 

29  4  economies  in, 

,-94;,295'  methods  of  national¬ 
ization  295-296.  (See  also 
Railroads;  Regulation.) 

ReoC9^1.1*  Socialist  party  on,  4, 
32°,  socialist  legislative 
measure  on,  322. 

Recreation,  public,  socialist  mu¬ 
nicipal  program  on,  312,  313- 
Sons!*  3i7Clallst  administra- 
Referendum,  Socialist  party  on, 
4,  320,  socialist  legislative 
measures  on,  322. 

Reform  forces  that  make  for 
socialism,  282  ff. 

Rn?Ul47i-0?>’  Democratic  party 
fi?’ Pi*°.^ressiye  party  on, 
69-70;  a  failure,  88-92;  and  a 
fraud,  88;  in  Wisconsin,  88- 
91;  why  a  failure,  91  in 
Washington,  91-92. 

Religion,  socialism  and,  12 

R  rPo^llcan  ,  Party.  Socialist 
party  on,  1-2;  offers  no  rem- 
edy  for  existing  conditions, 

9,  stands  for  capitalism,  9-10- 
presidential  vote,  21;  accom- 
plishments,  35,  41;  platform 
ai’ brief  history  of, 
?J‘43’  Democratic  party  on, 
43  L44’  4c^47l  Progressive 

Party  on,  66;  sham  issues  of, 
o  l-o3. 

Resolutions  of  Socialist  party 
on  administration  by  munici¬ 
pal  employes,  5;  propaganda 
In  army  and  navy,  5-6;  young 
people’s  socialist  organiza¬ 
tions,  6;  nominating  women 
•comrades,  6;  military  educa¬ 
tion  of  children,  6;  temper- 
ance,  6-7;  Dillingham  (immi¬ 
gration)  bill,  7;  restrictions 
on  citizenship,  7-8;  Rockefel- 
Colorado  outrages, 
<2lb-217 ,  liquor  question,  265. 
Retail  prices  of  food,  advanced 
over  wholesale  prices,  125* 
juggled,  126-217;  by  principal 
articles  153-154;  in  typical 
store,  155;  percentage  of  in¬ 
crease  or  decrease  in,  155- 
relative  increase  in  and  in 
wages,  156,  157. 

Retail  stores,  absorbed  by  big 
interests,  116-118.  y  & 

Retailers’  trust,  124-126. 

Right  to  organize,  strike  and 
picket,  socialist  state  pro¬ 
g-ram  on,  319;  of  government 
and  postal  employes,  social¬ 
ist  measure  in  congress  on, 

oZb. 

Rockefeller,  John  D.,  of  sep- 
temviriate  of  industry  98 # 
combination  with  J.  p.  Mor- 
gan,  98;  estimated  income  of, 
130;  wealth  in  railroads,  130; 
income  of  compared  with  av- 
erage  worker’s  and  with  pres¬ 
ident  s,  150;  wealth  of  com- 
pared  with  kings,  218 
Rockefeller,  John  D.,  Jr,  in 


Colorado  strike,  212,  216  217 
Rura.1  credits.  Democratic  party 
on,  47.  (See  also  Loans.) 


Sabotage,  origin  of  word,  30- 
31,  why  Socialist  party  op¬ 
poses,  31-32.  y  p 

Safety  devices,  socialist  m'unlci- 

Pal  JJ?sram  on'  312-*  social- 
ist  state  program  on,  320;  so- 

oSU?22  lesislatlve  measures 
Senate,  Socialist  party  on 
abolition  of,  4,  328  P  y  n 

SC94°5?-1’ofJlildlren'  underfed,  246- 
248,  attendance,  248-249;  chil- 
dren,  physical  defects  of 

c^<f1°Clalls-t.officials'  3H;  so¬ 
cialist  municipal  program  on 

fegi  s  1  a  t  es»  3 1 3  >  SlS 

legislative  measure  on  free 

cation?)  ’  323‘  (See  also 

SoHa!  ev{l>  and  bad  housing 
226;  extent  of,  254;  annual 

problem r<9^  25 4  ’  an  econ°mic 
of  b25^  25s- ;  ^ono™ic  causes 
T.^tf^5"258’  Department  of 
Justice  on  causes  of,  258- 
clothes  not  a  factor,  258;  re- 
poverty  and,  258- 
260,  white  slave  traffic,  260- 
zbi,  and  low  wages,  261-262- 
on?1!!^1  municipal  program 
Socialism”,  brief  definition  of  8- 
11,  authorities  on,  8-9- 
changes  proposed  by,  io: 

10-11;  definitions 
21;  ,,i5'16^Pa,thol|c  defense  of, 

lie's2  22  ^‘Cinmt3  ot  by  cath0- 
ii7S’-  n°t  contrary  to 

23-riaVienitJ  0/  Catholicism, 
23,  alleged,  of  early  catho- 
y,®  church  fathers,  25-26; 
Frances  E.  Willard  on,  80- 

ni/infr°Wth  of’  in  the  trade 
union  movement,  178-179- 
trade  unionism  and,  179-  re- 

282n30fi?IT£l  that„  make  ’  for, 
383-306,  labor  forces  that 
make  for,  307-308.  (See  also 
S np?Cnalls,t:  Socialist  Party.) 
Socialist,  criticism  of  syndical¬ 
ism,  28;  contention  in  regard 

Fnr?ra?ff  P,aortly  Proved  by 
K™?’o14?'  „  (See  also  social- 
ism,  Socialist  Party.) 

So^ahst  Labor  vote,  for  presi- 

Socialist  Party,  platform,  1-5- 
resolutions,  5-8,  216-217,  265; 
offers  only  remedy  for  exist- 

i  q&99<:0ndl'tl1l?ns,  10»'  vote,  10, 
iy-32,  parliamentary  repre¬ 
sentation,  10,  21;  construc- 

Ihin  Pir?§ir«am  °J’  11:  member- 
hnt^’o-i7^8’  wPy  opposes  sa- 
rs1  flk  ll(3uor  question, 

to, ,  264-265;  proposed  farm¬ 
ers  program,  106-107;  and 
Michigan  strike,  211;  and 
Coiorado  strike,  216-217;  and 

war  272-274;  proclamation  on 

Mexican  war,  279-280;  and 
labor  organizations,  307;  num¬ 
ber  of  congressmen  if  elected 
+?y  Proportional  representa- 
7 i°in o A1 1  ’  municipal  program, 
311-313;  municipal  adminis¬ 
trations,  313-319;  state  pro¬ 
gram,  319-320;  in  state  legis¬ 
latures,  320-324;  national  pro- 

32 /cj331  ’  t  in  congress, 
325-331.  (See  also  Socialism; 
Socialist.) 

Standard  Oil  Company,  dissolu- 
tlPiy°T  84-g6?  combination 
with  J.  P.  Morgan  &  Co.,  98; 
]and  holdings  of»  !01;  history 
of,  112-113;  owns  “chain”  of 
drug  stores,  117;  owns 
chain”  of  restaurants,  117; 
control  banks,  118;  profits  of, 


131-132,  218;  investments  in 
increase  1000  per  cent,  132; 
income  compared  with  wealth 
of  kings,  218;  dominates  Su¬ 
preme  Count  of  Pennsylvania, 
232. 

State  Insurance,  agricultural, 
socialist  state  program  on, 
320;  life,  socialist  legislative 
measure  on,  323. 

State  legislatures,  socialist 
members  of,  10-11,  310;  work 
of  socialist  members  of,  320- 
324. 

State  program,  Socialist  party, 
319-320. 

Steel  mills,  labor  conditions  in, 
157-158 ;  number  of  employes 
in,  159;  fatalities  in,  159;  in¬ 
juries  in,  159. 

Steel  Trust.  (See  United  States 
Steel  Corporation;  also  Beth¬ 
lehem  Steel  Corporation.) 

Street  railways,  many  con¬ 
trolled  by  General  Electric 
Company,  108;  municipal 
ownership  of,  283. 

Street  trades,  child  labor  in,  173. 

Strike,  general,  30;  West  Vir¬ 
ginia,  200-204;  Michigan,  204- 
211;  Colorado,  212-217;  so¬ 
cialist  resolution  in  congress 
on  Lawrence,  325;  socialist 
state  program  on  right  to, 
319;  socialist  state  program 
on  advertisements  during, 
319;  socialist  legislative  meas¬ 
ure  on  advertisement  during. 
322. 

Strike  breakers,  193,  194-195; 

in  West  Virginia,  195,  201- 
202;  in  Michigan,  195,  209;  so¬ 
cialist  municipal  program  on 
use  of  police  for,  312;  social¬ 
ist  state  program  on  use  of 
police  for,  319.  (See  also 
Gunmen.) 

Strikes  and  lockouts,  183-184. 

Suffrage,  restriction  of,  57,  59; 
socialist  state  program  on, 
320;  socialist  legislative 
measure  on  Belgium  strike 
for,  322.  (See  also  Vote.) 

Suicides,  154,  164,  259-260. 

Supreme  Court,  Socialist  party 
on  usurped  power  of,  4,  328. 

Surplus  value,  definition  of,  16. 

Syndicalism,  definition  of,  27- 
28;  socialist  criticism  of,  28. 

Syndicalists,  non-political  atti¬ 
tude  of,  28-29;  believe  in  mi¬ 
nority  rule,  29-30. 


Tariff,  Republican  party  on,  37, 
42;  Democratic  party  on,  43- 
44,  54;  and  cost  of  living,  60- 
63;  Progressive  party  on,  72- 
73;  and  labor,  82,  325;  a  sham 
issue,  83. 

Taxation,  socialist  legislative 
measure  on,  323;  of  inherit¬ 
ances  and  of  land  values,  so- 
cialist  state  program  on,  320. 

Telegraph,  Democratic  party  on 
regulation  of,  47;  concentra¬ 
tion  in  ownership  of,  94,  119; 
nates,  119,  298;  history  of 
Western  Union,  119;  public 
ownership  of,  298-303;  profits 
of  companies,  299-300;  capi¬ 
talization  of  companies,  300- 
301.  (See  also  Telephone.) 

Telephone,  Democratic  party  on 
regulation  of,  47;  concentra¬ 
tion  in  ownership  of,  94,  98, 
120;  number  of  operators  in 
system,  148;  average  weekly 
wage  of  operators,  148;  av¬ 
erage  weekly  wage  that  could 
be  paid,  148;  public  owner¬ 
ship  of,  298-303;  rates,  300. 
(See  also  Telegraph.) 

Temperance,  Socialist  party 
resolution  on,  6-7.  (See  also 
Liquor  Question.) 


Tenements,  New  York  City,  226. 

Text  books,  socialist  state  pro¬ 
gram  on  free,  320. 

Timber,  concentration  in  own¬ 
ership  of,  111-112. 

Tobacco,  trust,  dissolution  of, 
86-87;  concentration  in  own¬ 
ership  of  manufactures,  115; 
retail  cigar  stores  largely 
controlled  by,  117;  profits  of, 
132;  overcapitalization  of, 
235-236. 

Trade  unions.  (See  Labor 
Unions;  Organized  Labor; 
Women’s  Labor  Organiza¬ 
tions.) 

Trades,  classed  according  to  fa¬ 
talities  in  various,  163;  com¬ 
parative  death  rate  from  tu¬ 
berculosis  in  various,  165-166. 

Transportation  occupations, 
wage  earners  in,  134,  135,  136, 
137;  capitalists  in,  135;  mid¬ 
dle  class  in,  135;  hand  and 
miachine  labor  in,  140. 

Trusts,  cost  of  living  and,  9; 
Democratic  party  on  regula¬ 
tion  of,  47;  Progressive  party 
on  regulation  of,  69-70;  regu¬ 
lation  of  a  failure,  83-92; 
concentration  in,  93-96;  prices 
of  at  home  and  abroad,  127; 
are  labor  unions?  186;  news¬ 
paper  and  the,  268;  socialist 
solution  of  problem,  327. 
(See  also  Capitalism;  Con¬ 
centration.) 

Tuberculosis,  comparative  death 
rate  from  in  different  occupa¬ 
tions,  165;  by  occupation 
groups,  165-166;  spreads  with 
congestion,  226;  deaths  from 
in  cigar  manufacture,  244;  so¬ 
cialist  municipal  program  on, 
312;  commission  to  fight  es¬ 
tablished  by  Milwaukee  so¬ 
cialist  administration,  314; 
socialist  legislative  measure 
ooo  as  occupational  disease, 
322.  (See  also  Diseases;  Oc¬ 
cupational  Diseases.) 


u 

Underfeeding,  relation  between 
worker’s  income  and,  246;  of 
school  children,  246-248. 

Unemployment,  Socialist  party 
on,  3-4;  ended  under  social¬ 
ism,  10;  Victor  L.  Berger  on, 
82-83;  extent  of,  166-168;  pro¬ 
portion  of  in  various  occupa¬ 
tions,  167;  by  duration,  167; 
in  labor  unions,  167;  in  min¬ 
ing  industry,  168;  causes  of, 
168;  a  factor  in  poverty,  221; 
waste  of,  243-244;  socialist 
municipal  program  on,  312; 
socialist  state  program'  on, 
320;  socialist  measures  in 
congress  on,  327. 

Union  labor,  employed  under 
socialist  administration,  313, 
315-316.  (See  also  Labor; 
Labor  Unions;  Organized 
Labor.) 

United  States,  expenditures  and 
appropriations  for  govern¬ 
ment  of,  *271,  332;  expendi¬ 
tures  for  war  in,  271;  area, 
332;  population,  332,  333;  ex¬ 
penditures  for  education  in, 
332;  new  wealth  annually, 
333;  railway  capital  and  divi¬ 
dends  in,  334;  size  of  families 
in,  334. 

United  States  Steel  Corporation, 
land  holdings  of,  101;  owns 
50  per  cent  of  nation’s  iron 
ore,  113;  controls  foundries 
and  iron  works,  117;  profits 
of,  132,  146;  gross  yearly 

sales,  146;  number  of  em¬ 
ployes,  146;  average  wage  of 
worker,  146;  average  wage 
that  could  be  paid,  146,  147* 


xvi 


decline  In  wages,  156-157; 
overcapitalization  of,  236-237. 
(See  also  Bethlehem  Steel 
Corporation.) 


V 

Ventilation  of  factories,  social¬ 
ist  legislative  measure  on, 
322. 

Vice.  (See  Social  Evil.) 

Vocational  schools,  socialist 
state  program  on,  320.  (See 
also  Education;  School.) 

Vote,  socialist,  19-21;  presiden¬ 
tial,  21,  78. 


w 

Wage  earner,  relative  share  of, 
82;  production  of,  82;  aver¬ 
age  number  of  in  manufac¬ 
turing  establishments,  114- 
115;  in  classes  of  occupation, 
134-135;  his  chance  to  become 
a  capitalist,  138-139;  his  share 
of  wealth  produced  in  manu¬ 
facturing  establishments,  141- 
142,  143;  average  yearly  wage 
of,  142;  average  yearly  pro¬ 
duction  of,  142;  number  of  In 
steel  mills,  159;  number  of  in 
metal  mines,  161,  162;  in  coal 
mines,  162.  (See  also  Child 
Labor;  Labor;  Wages;  Work¬ 
ers.) 

Wages,  progressively  Increased 
under  socialism,  10;  average, 
82;  average  yearly  in  manu¬ 
facturing  establishments,  142; 
average  of  workingman,  143; 
average  paid  by  Ford  Motor 
Co.,  143;  average  yearly  in 
various  industries.  145-148; 
average  yearly  that  could  be 
paid  in  various  industries, 
145-148;  and  the  cost  of  liv¬ 
ing,  148-153;  annual  by 
groups,  149,  152;  average  com¬ 
pared  with  incomes  of  presi¬ 
dent  and  Rockefeller,  150;  is 
advance  in  keeping  pace  with 
Increased  cost  of  living?  156- 
157;  increase  in  steel  nomi¬ 
nal,  156-157;  of  women  in 
Massachusetts,  176-177;  of 
women  increased  thru  or¬ 
ganization,  182;  and  the  so¬ 
cial  evil,  255,  256,  257-258,  261- 
262;  low  cause  of  suicide,  259- 
260;  on  government  railways, 
289;  increase  of  by  socialist 
municipal  administrations, 
313,  315-316;  socialist  state 

program  on,  319;  socialist 
measures  in  congress  on,  326. 
(See  also  Incomes;  Minimum 
Wage.) 

War,  none  under  socialism,  10; 
pensions,  270>  and  militarism. 
270-281;  more  than  half  of 
total  government  expendi¬ 
tures  for,  271;  waste  of,  271- 
272;  Socialist  party  and,  272- 
274;  socialists  prevent,  272- 
274;  cost  of  in  human  life, 
274-275;  fostered  by  those 
who  profit  from,  275-277; 
Mexican,  279-281;  Socialist 
party  proclamation  on  Mexi¬ 
can,  279-280.  (See  also  Mili¬ 
tarism.) 

Waste,  241-245;  from  inefficient 
equipment,  241-242;  from  idle 
facfories,  242;  useless  super¬ 
intendents,  242-243;  from  idle 
land,  243;  from  antiquated 
farming  methods,  243;  from 
advertising,  243;  from  unem'- 
ployment,  243-244;  of  human 


life,  244-245;  summary  of 
wasted  wealth,  245;  mineral, 
245;  of  war,  271-272. 

Water  power,  U.  S.,  total,  107; 
concentration  In  ownership 
of,  107-110. 

Watered  stock,  railroad,  237- 
238.  (See  also  Overcapitaliza¬ 
tion.) 

Waterworks,  municipal  own¬ 
ership  of,  282-283. 

Wealth,  concentration  \>f  Into  a 
few  .hands,  96-99;  worker’s 
share  of,  141-142;  concentra¬ 
tion  of,  218  ff. ;  of  kings  and 
Rockefeller  -compared,  218; 
wasted,  245;  produced  annual¬ 
ly  in  the  U.  S.,  333.  (See  also 
Capitalism,  Concentration, 
Trusts.) 

Weights  and  measures,  fraudu¬ 
lent,  239-240. 


West  Virginia  strike,  200-204; 

#  under  democratic  administra¬ 
tion,  63-64,  200;  under  Pro¬ 
gressive  governor,  76-77,  200; 
gunmen  in,  195,  200-202. 

Western  Union  Telegraph  Com¬ 
pany,  history  of,  119;  over- 
capitalization  of,  119;  profits 
of,  299.  (See  also  Telegraph.) 

Willard,  Frances  E.,  on  intem¬ 
perance,  80;  on  socialism,  80- 
81. 

Woman  suffrage,  Socialist  party 
on,  4;  Democratic  party  and, 
o9;  Progressive  party  on,  67; 
Prohibition  party  on,  77;  so¬ 
cialist  state  program  on,  320; 
socialist  measure  in  congress 
on,  328-329;  progress  of,  330- 
331. 

Women,  Socialist  party  resolu¬ 
tion  on  for  public  office,  6;  in 
West  Virginia  strike,  200-201; 
in  Colorado  strike,  214,  215. 
216;  imported  for  immoral 
purposes,  260-261.  (See  also 
Women  Workers.) 

Women  workers,  Progressive 
party  on.  68;  in  classes  of  oc¬ 
cupations,  134;  by  occupa¬ 
tions.  174-175;  displace  men, 
175-176;  causes  that  led  to 
position  in  industry,  176: 
wages  of,  176-177;  in  other 
countries,  178;  socialist  leg¬ 
islative  measure  on  ten  hour 
day  for,  321;  socialist  meas¬ 
ure  in  congress  on  eight  hour 
day  for,  326.  (See  also  Wo¬ 
men’s  Labor  Organizations.) 

Women’s  labor  organizations. 
179-183;  number  and  extent 
of,  180;  Improvement  secured 
in  hours  and  wages,  181-183. 
(See  also  Women  Workers.) 

Workers,  disfranchised,  57-59: 
by  occupations,  136;  and  id¬ 
lers.  136-137;  in  useless  occu¬ 
pations,  137-138;  chance  to 
become  capitalists,  138-139; 
share  of  wealth  produced  in 
manufacturing  establish¬ 
ments,  141-142,  143;  average 
yearly  wage  of,  142;  average 
yearly  production  of,  142;  re¬ 
lation  between  income  aid 
underfeeding,  246.  (See  also 
Child  Labor;  Labor;  Wage 
Earner;  Women  Workers.) 

Workingmen’s  budget,  148-149. 

Workmen’s  compensation,  Dem¬ 
ocratic  party  on,  64;  social¬ 
ist  state  program  on,  320;  so¬ 
cialist  legislative  measures 
on,  322,  323. 

Wrecks  on  railways,  293. 


PART  I 


THE  SOCIALIST  PARTY,  ITS  PLATFORM 
AND  PROGRAM 


1.  Platform  and  Resolutions. 

The  representatives  of  the  Socialist  party,  in  National  Con¬ 
vention  at  Indianapolis,  declare  that  the  capitalist  system  has 
outgrown  its  historical  function,  and  has  become  utterly  in¬ 
capable  of  meeting  the  problems  now  confronting  society.  We 
denounce  this  outgrown  system  as  incompetent  and  corrupt 
and  the  source  of  unspeakable  misery  and  suffering  to  the  whole 
working  class. 

Under  this  system  the  industrial  equipment  of  the  nation 
has  passed  into  the  absolute  control  of  plutocracy,  which  ex¬ 
acts  an  annual  tribute  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  from 
the  producers.  Unafraid  of  any  organized  resistance,  it  stretches 
out  its  greedy  hands  over  the  still  undeveloped  resources  of 
the  nation — the  land,  the  mines,  the  forests  and  the  water- 
powers  of  every  state  in  the  Union. 

In  spite  of  the  multiplication  of  labor-saving  machines  and 
improved  methods  in  industry,  which  cheapen  the  cost  of  pro¬ 
duction,  the  share  of  the  producers  grows  ever  less,  and  the 
prices  of  all  the  necessities  of  life  steadily  increase.  The  boasted 
prosperity  of  this  nation  is  for  the  owning  class  alone.  To 
the  rest  it  means  only  greater  hardship  and  misery.  The  high 
cost  of  living  is  felt  in  every  home.  Millions  .bf  wage-workers 
have  seen  the  purchasing  power  of  their  wages  decrease  until 
life  has  become  a  desperate  battle  for  mere  existence. 

Multitudes  of  unemployed  walk  the  streets  of  our  cities  or 
trudge  from  state  to  state  awaiting  the  will  of  the  masters  to 
move  the  wheels  of  industry. 

The  farmers  in  every  state  are  plundered  by  the  increasing 
prices  exacted  for  tools  and  machinery  and  by  extortionate  rent, 
freight  rates  and  storage  charges. 

Capitalist  concentration  is  mercilessly  crushing  the  class  of 
small  business  men  and  driving  its  members  into  the  ranks  of 
propertyless  wage-workers.  The  overwhelming  majority  of  the 
people  of  America  are  being  forced  under  a  yoke  of  bondage 
by  this  soulless  industrial  despotism. 

It.  is  this  capitalist  system  that  is  responsible  for  the  in¬ 
creasing  burden  of  armaments,  the  poverty,  slums,  child  labor, 
most  of  the  insanity,  crime  and  prostitution,  and  much  of  the 
disease  that  afflicts  mankind. 

Under  this  system  the  working  class  is  exposed  to  poisonous 
conditions,  to  frightful  and  needless  perils  to  life  and  limb, 
is  walled  around  with  court  decisions,  injunctions  and  unjust 
laws,  and  is  preyed  upon  incessantly  for  the  benefit  of  the  con¬ 
trolling  oligarchy  of  wealth.  Under  it  also,  the  children  of 
the  working  class  are  doomed  to  ignorance,  drudging  toil  and 
darkened  lives. 

In  the  face  of  these  evils,  so  manifest  that  all  thoughtful 
observers  are  appalled  at  them,  the  legislative  representatives 
of  the  Republican  and  Democratic  parties  remain  the  faithful 
servants  of  the  oppressors.  Measures  designed  to  secure  to 
the  wage  earners  of  this  nation  as  humane  and  just  treatment 


2 

as  is  already  enjoyed  by  the  wage  earners  of  all  other  civilized 
nations  have  been  smothered  in  committee  without  debate, 
and  laws  ostensibly  designed  to  bring  relief  to  the  farmers  and 
general  consumers  are  juggled  and  transformed  into  instru¬ 
ments  for  the  exaction  of  further  tribute.  The  growing  unrest 
under  oppression  has  driven  these  two  old  parties  to  the  enact¬ 
ment  of  a  variety  of  regulative  measures,  none  of  which  has 
limited  in  any  appreciable  degree  the  power  of  the  plutocracy, 
and  some  of  them  have  been  perverted  into  means  for  increas¬ 
ing  that  power.  Anti-trust  laws,  railroad  restrictions  and  regula¬ 
tions,  with  the  prosecutions,  indictments  and  investigations 
based  upon  such  legislation,  have  proved  to  be  utterly  futile 
and  ridiculous. 

Nor  has  this  plutocracy  been  seriously  restrained  or  even 
threatened  by  any  Republican  or  Democratic  executive.  It 
has  continued  to  grow  in  power  and  insolence  alike  under  the 
administrations  of  Cleveland,  McKinley,  Roosevelt  and  Taft. 

In  addition  to  this  legislative  juggling  and  tjiis  executive 
connivance,  the  courts  of  America  have  sanctioned  and  strength¬ 
ened  the  hold  of  this  plutocracy  as  the  Dred  Scott  and  other 
decisions  strengthened  the  slave-power  before  the  Civil  war. 
They  have  been  used  as  instruments  for  the  oppression  of  the 
working  class  and  for  the  suppression  of  free  speech  and  free 
assembly. 

We  declare,  therefore,  that  the  longer  sufferance  of  these 
conditions  is  impossible,  and  we  purpose  to  end  them  all.  We 
declare  them  to  be  the  product  of  the  present  system,  in  which 
industry  is  carried  on  for  private  greed,  instead  of  for  the  wel¬ 
fare  of  society.  We  declare,  furthermore,  that  for  these  evils 
there  will  be  and  can  be  no  remedy  and  no  substantial  relief 
except  through  Socialism,  under  which  industry  will  be  carried 
on  for  the  confmon  good  and  every  worker  receive  the  full 
social  value  of  the  wealth  he  creates. 

Society  is  divided  into  warring  groups  and  clashes,  based 
upon  material  interests.  Fundamentally,  this  struggle  is  a  con-  , 
flict  between  the  tw'o  main  classes,  one  of  which,  the  capitalist 
class,  owns  the  means  of  production,  and  the  other,  the  work¬ 
ing  class,  must  use  these  means  of  production  on  terms  dic¬ 
tated  by  the  owners. 

The  capitalist  class,  though  few  in  numbers,  absolutely  con¬ 
trols  the  government— legislative,  executive  and  judicial.  This  i 
class  owns  the  machinery  of  gathering  and  disseminating  news 
through  its  organized  press.  It  subsidizes  seats  of  learning 
the  colleges  and  schools— and  even  religious  and  moral  agencies. 

It  has  also  the  added  prestige  which  established  customs  give 
to  any  order  of  society,  right  or  wrong. 

The  working  class,  which  includes  all  those  who  are  forced 
to  work  for  a  living,  whether  by  hand  or  brain,  in  shop,  mine 
or  on  the  soil,  vastly  outnumbers  the  capitalist  class.  Lacking 
effective  organization  and  class  solidarity,  this  class  is  unable 
to  enforce  its  will.  Given  such  class  solidarity  and  effective  or¬ 
ganization,  the  workers  will  have  the  power  to  make  all  laws 
and  control  all  industry  in  their  own  interest. 

All  political  parties  are  the  expression  .of  economic  class 
interests.  All  other  parties  than  the  Socialist  party  represent 
one  or  another  group  of  the  ruling  capitalist  class.  Their  po¬ 
litical  conflicts  reflect  merely  superficial  rivalries  between  com¬ 
peting  capitalist  groups.  However  they  result,  these  conflicts 
have  no  issue  of  real  value  to  the  work’ers.  Whether  the  Demo¬ 
crats  or  Republicans  win  politically,  it  is  the  capitalist  class 
that  is  victorious  economically. 

The  Socialist  party  is  the  political  expression  of  the  economic 
interests  of  the  workers.  Its  defeats  have  been  their  defeats  and 


/ 

3 

its  victories  their  victories.  It  is  -a  party  founded  on  the  science 
and  laws  of  social  development.  It  proposes  that,  since  all 
social  necessities  today  are  socially  produced,  the  means  of 
their  production  and  distribution  shall  be  socially  owned  and 
democratically  controlled. 

In  the  face'  of  the  economic  and  political  aggressions  of  the 
capitalist  class  the  only  reliance  left  the  workers  is  that  of  their 
economic  organizations  and  their  political  power.  By  the  in¬ 
telligent  and  class-conscious  use  of  these,  they  may  resist  suc¬ 
cessfully  the  capitalist  class,  break  the  fetters. of  wage-slavery, 
and  fit  themselves  for  the  future  society,  which  is  to  displace 
the  capitalist  system.  The  Socialist  party  appreciates  the  full 
significance  of  class  organization  and  urges  the  wage  earners, 
the  working  farmers  and  -all  other  useful  workers  everywhere 
to  organize  for  economic  and  political  action,  and  we  pledge 
ourselves  to  support  the  toilers  of  the  fields  as  well  as  those  in 
the  shops,  factories  and  mines  of  the  nation  in  their  struggles 
for  economic  justice. 

In  the  defeat  or  victory  of  the  working  class  party  in  this 
new  struggle  for  freedom  lies  the  defeat  or  triumph  of  the  com¬ 
mon  people  of  all  economic  groups,  as  well  as  the  failure  or  the 
triumph  of  popular  government.  Thus  the  Socialist  party  is  the 
party  of  the  present  day  revolution,  which  marks  the  transition 
from  economic  individualism  to  Socialism,  from  wage-slavery  to 
free  co-operation,  from  capitalist  oligarchy  to  industrial  democ¬ 
racy. 

Working  Program. 

As  measures  calculated  to  strengthen  the  working  class  in 
its  fight  for  the  realization  of  its  ultimate  aim,  the  co-operative 
commonwealth,  and  to  increase  its  power  of  resistance  against 
capitalist  oppression,  we  advocate  and  pledge  ourselves  -and  our 
elected  officers  to  the  following  program: 

Collective  Ownership. 

1.  The  collective  ownership  -and  democratic  management  of 
railroads,  wire  and  wireless  telegraphs  and  telephones,  express 
services,  steamboat  lines  and  all  other  social  means  of  trans¬ 
portation  and  communication  and  of  -all  large-scale  industries. 

2.  The  immediate  acquirement  by  the  municipalities,  the 
states  or  the  federal  government  of  all  grain  elevators,  stock 
yards,  storage  warehouses,  and  other  distributing  -agencies,  in 
order  to  reduce  the  present  extortionate  cost  of  living. 

3.  The  extension  of  the  public  domain  to  include  mines, 
quarries,  oil  wells,  forests  and  water  power. 

4.  The  further  conservation  and  development  of  natural 
resources  for  the  use  and  benefit  of  -all  the  people: 

(a)  By  scientific  forestation  and  timber  protection. 

(b)  By  the  reclamation  of  arid  and  swamp  tracts. 

(c)  By  the  storage  of  flood  waters  and  the  utilization  of 
water  power. 

(d)  By  the  stoppage  of  the  present  extravagant  waste  of 
the  soil  and  of  the  products  of  mines  and  oil  wells. 

(e)  By  the  development  of  highway  and  waterway  systems. 

5.  The  collective  ownership  of  land  wherever  practicable, 
and  in  cases  where  such  ownership  is  impracticable  the  appro¬ 
priation  by  taxation  of  the  annual  rental  value  of  all  land  held 
for  speculation  or  exploitation. 

6.  The  collective  ownership  and  democratic  management  of 
the  banking  and  currency  system. 

U  nemployment. 

The  immediate  government  relief  of  the  unemployed  by  the 
extension  of  all  useful  public  works.  All  persons  employed  on 


4 


such  works  to  be  engaged  directly  by  the  government  under  a 
workday  of  not  more  than  eight  hours  and  at  not  less  than  the 
prevailing  union  wages.  The  government  also  to  establish  em¬ 
ployment  bureaus;  to  lend  money  to  states  and  municipalities 
without  interest  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  on  public  works, 
and  to  take  such  other  measures  within  its  power  as  will  lessen 
the  widespread  misery  of  the  workers  caused  by  the  misrule  of 
the  capitalist  class. 

Industrial  Demands. 

The  conservation  of  human  resources,  particularly  of  the 
lives  and  well-being  of  the  workers  and  their  families: 

1.  By  shortening  the  workday  in  keeping  with  the  increased 
productiveness  of  machinery. 

2.  By  securing  to  every  worker  a  rest  period  of  not  less 
than  a  day  and  a  half  in  each  week. 

3.  By  securing  a  more  effective  inspection  of  workshops, 
factories  and  mines. 

4.  By  forbidding  the  employment  of  children  under* sixteen 
years  of  age. 

5.  By  the  co-operative  organization  of  the  industries  in  the 
federal  penitentiaries  for  the  benefit  of  the  convicts  and  their 
dependents. 

6.  By  forbidding  the  interstate  transportation  of  the  products 
of  child  labor,  of  convict  labor  and  of  all  uninspected  factories 
and  mines. 

7.  By  abolishing  the  profit  system  in  government  work, 
and  substituting  either  the  direct  hire  of  labor  or  the  awarding 
of  contracts  to  co-operative  groups  of  workers. 

8.  By  establishing  minimum  wage  scales. 

9.  By  abolishing  official  charity  and  substituting  a  non¬ 
contributory  system  of  old-age  pensions,  a  general  system  of 
insurance  by  the  state  of  all  its  members  against  unemployment 
and  invalidism  and  a  system  of  compulsory  insurance  by  em¬ 
ployers  of  their  workers,  without  cost  to  the  latter,  against  in¬ 
dustrial  diseases,  accidents  and  death. 


Political  Demands. 

1.  The  absolute  freedom  of  press,  speech  and  assemblage. 

2.  The  adoption  of  a  graduated  income  tax,  the  increase  of 
the  rates  of  the  present  corporation  tax  and  the  extension  of 
inheritance  taxes,  graduated  in  proportion  to  the  value  of  the 
estate  and  to  nearness  of  kin — the  proceeds  of  these  taxes  to 
be  employed  in  the  socialization  of  industry. 

3.  The  abolition  of  the  monopoly  ownership  of  patents  and 
the  substitution  of  collective  ownership,  with  direct  rewards  to 
inventors  by  premiums  or  royalties. 

4.  Unrestricted  and  equal  suffrage  for  men  and  women. 

5.  The  adoption  of  the  initiative,  referendum  and  recall 
and  of  proportional  representation,  nationally  as  well  as  locally. 

6.  The  abolition  of  the  Senate  and  of  the  veto  power  of  the 
President. 

7.  The  election  of  the  President  and  the  Vice-President  by 
direct  vote  of  the  people. 

8.  The  abolition  of  the  power  usurped  by  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  to  pass  upon  the  constitutionality  of 
the  legislation  enacted  by  Congress.  National  laws  to  be  re¬ 
pealed  only  by  act  of  Congress  or  by  a  referendum  vote  of  the 
whole  people. 

9.  The  abolition  of  the  present  restrictions  upon  the  amend¬ 
ment  of  the  constitution,  so  that  that  instrument  may  be  made 
amendable  by  a  majority  of  the  voters  in  the  country. 


10.  The  granting  of  the  right  of  suffrage  in  the  District  of 
Columbia  with  representation  in  Congress  and  a  democratic 
form  of  municipal  government  for  purely  local  affairs. 

11.  The  extension  of  democratic  government  to  all  United 
States  territory. 

12.  The  enactment  of  further  measures  for  general  educa¬ 
tion  and  particularly  for  vocational  education  in  useful  pursuits. 
The  Bureau  of  Education  to  be  made  a  department. 

13.  The  enactment  of  further  measures  for  the  conservation 
of  health.  The  creation  of  an  independent  bureau  of  health, 
with  such  restrictions  as  will  secure  full  liberty  to  all  schools 
of  practice. 

14.  The  separation  of  the  present  Bureau  of  Labor  from  the 
Department  of  Commerce  and  Labor  and  its  elevation  to  the 
rank  of  a  department. 

15.  Abolition  of  all  federal  district  courts  and  the  United 
States  Circuit  Courts  of  Appeals.  State  courts  to  have  jurisdic¬ 
tion  in  all  cases  arising  between  citizens  of  the  several  states 
and  foreign  corporations.  The  election  of  all  judges  for  short 
terms. 

16.  The  immediate  curbing  of  the  power  of  the  courts  to 
issue  injunctions. 

17.  The  free  administration  of  the  law. 

18.  The  calling  of  a  convention  for  the  revision  of  the  con¬ 
stitution  of  the  United  States. 

Such  measures  of  relief  as  we  may  be  able  to  force  from 
capitalism  are  but  a  preparation  of  the  workers  to  seize  the 
whole  powers  of  government,  in  order  that  they  may  thereby 
lay  hold  of  the  whole  system  of  socialized  industry  and  thus 
come  to  their  rightful  inheritance. 

RESOLUTIONS  ADOPTED  BY  THE  NATIONAL  CON¬ 
VENTION  OF  THE  SOCIALIST  PARTY,  MAY,  1912. 

Administration  by  Municipal  Employes. 

Whereas,  The  party  has  during  the  past  year  secured  control 
of  a  number  of  cities,  thus  becoming  the  employer  of  many 
workers; 

Whereas,  The-  party  realizes  that  intelligent  administration 
of  government  involves  the  organization  of  the  workers  in  all 
departments; 

Whereas,  The  object  of  the  Socialist  party  is  to  secure  for 
all  workers  not  only  the  full  product  of  their  labor,  but  a  voice 
in  determining  their  conditions  of  work,  therefore  be  it 

Resolved,  That  the  party  adopt  as  a  policy  to  be  observed  by 
its  representatives  in  offipe  the  organization  of  workers  in  all 
departments  under  Socialist  control  so  that  each  department 
may  obtain  an  organized  expression  of  the  workers’  point  of 
view  on  administrative  methods  and  conditions  of  work. 

Propaganda  in  the  Army  and  Navy. 

Whereas,  In  the  class  struggle  the  military  is  often  the  first 
and  always  the  last  resort  of  the  ruling  class;  and 

Whereas,  The  army,  the  navy,  the  militia  and  the  police 
offer  a  fertile  field  for  the  dissemination  of  Socialist  teachings; 

and 

Whereas,  The  growth  of  Socialist  thought  among  the  armed 
defenders  of  capitalism  tends  to  reduce  the  power  of  the  ruling 
class  to  rule  and  outrage  the  working  class,  and  thus  to  end  the 
oppression  and  violence  that  labor  suffers, 

Be  it  Resolved,  That  the  N.  E.  Committee  be  instructed  to  se¬ 
cure  the  services  of  such  a  comrade  or  comrades  as  have  made 
a  special  study  of  war  and  militarism,  and  that  such  comrade 


or  comrades  prepare  special  appropriate  leaflets  to  distribute 
among  soldiers,  sailors,  militia  and  police. 

Resolved,  That  the  N.  E.  Committee  publish  such  leaflets 
and  pamphlets  and  offer  for  sale  through  the  usual  channels, 
and  that  in  addition  an  organized  effort  be  made  for  the  distri¬ 
bution  of  such  leaflets  among  all  the  armed  defenders*of  capital¬ 
ist-class  rule  and  among  all  military  organizations  and  all  gov¬ 
ernment  homes  for  disabled  soldiers  and  sailors. 

Young  People’s  Socialist  Organizations. 

Whereas,  A  fertile  and  promising  field  for  Socialist  education 
is  found  among  the  young  people,  both  because  it  reaches  per¬ 
sons  with  unprejudiced  and  unbiased  minds,  and  because  it 
yields  the  most  valuable  recruits  for  the  Socialist  movement;  and 

Whereas,  If  we  can  gain  the  ear  of  a  majority  of  the  youth 
of  our  country,  the  future  will  be  ours,  with  the  passing  of  the 
present  generation;  therefore  be  it 

Resolved,  That  we  recommend  and  urge  our  Locals  to  form, 
encourage  and  assist  Young  Socialist  Leagues  and  Young  Peo¬ 
ple’s  Clubs  for  the  purpose  of  educating  our  youth  in  the  prin¬ 
ciples  of  Socialism,  and  that  this  education  be  combined  with 
social  pleasures  and  athletic  exercises;  and  further 

Resolved,  That  we  recommend  to  the  National  Executive 
Committee  to  give  such  aid  and  encouragement  to  this  work 
as  may  seem  to  it  best  calculated  to  further  the  spread  of  Social¬ 
ism  among  the  youth  of  the  United  States. 

Nominating  Women  Comrades. 

Whereas,  An  increasing  number  of  women  are  taking  part  in 
industrial  activity,  so  that  they  are  today  an  important  factor  in 
economics  and  social  life,  and  are  thereby  Qualifying  themselves 
for  participation  in  political  administration;  therefore  be  it 

Resolved,  That  the  Socialist  party  deems  women  entitled 
equally  with  men  to  be  nominated  for  and  elected  to  public  of¬ 
fice,  so  that  they  may  help  manage  our  common  affairs. 

Military  Education  of  Children. 

Whereas,  The  capitalist  class  is  making  determined  and  per¬ 
sistent  efforts  to  use  the  public  schools  for  the  military  training 
of  children  and  for  the  inculcation  of  the  military  spirit;  there¬ 
fore  be  it  '  . 

Resolved,  That  we.  are  opposed  to  all  efforts  to  introduce 
military  training  into  the  public  schools,  and  that  we  recom¬ 
mend  the  introduction  into  our  public  school  system  of  a  thor¬ 
ough  -and  progressive  course  in  physical  culture,  and 

Resolved,  That  we  request  the  National  Executive  Committee 
to  suggest  plans  and  programs  along  this  line  and  furnish  these 
to  the  party  membership,  together  witfr  such  advice  in  the  mat¬ 
ter  as  may  be  helpful  to  the  party  membership  in  introducing 
such  a  system  into  our  public  schools. 

Temperance. 

The  manufacture  and  sale  for  profit  of  intoxicating  and  adul¬ 
terated  liquors  leads  directly  to  many  serious  social  evils.  In¬ 
temperance  in  the  use  of  alcoholic  liquors  weakens  the  physical, 
mental  and  moral  powers. 

We  hold,  therefore,  that  any  excessive  indulgence  in  intoxicat¬ 
ing  liquors  by  members  of  the  working  class  is  a  serious  obstacle 
to  the  triumph  of  our  class  since  it  impairs  the  vigor  of  the 
fighters  in  the  political  and  economic  struggle,  and  we  urge  the 
members  of  the  working  class  to  avoid  any  indulgence  which 
might  impair  their  ability  to  wage  a  successful  political  and 
economic  struggle,  and  so  hinder  the  progress  of  the  movement 
for  their  emancipation. 

We  do  not  believe  that  the  evils  of  alcbholism  can  be  eradi- 


7 


cated  by  repressive  measures  or  any  extension  of  the  police 
powers  of  the  capitalist  state — alcoholism  is  a  disease  of  which 
capitalism  is  the  chief  cause.  Poverty,  overwork  and  overworry 
necessarily  result  in  intemperance  on  the  part  of  the  victims. 
To  abolish  the  wage  system  with  all  its  evils  is  the  surest  way 
to  eliminate  the  evils  of  alcoholism  and  the  traffic  in  intoxicating 
liquor. 

The  Dillingham  Bill. 

Whereas,  The  Dillingham  bill  passed  by  the  United  States 
Senate  would  bar  from  this  country  many  political  refugees 
under  a  hollow  distinction  that  some  political  crimes  involve 
“moral  turpitude”;  and, 

Whereas,  Such  distinctions  would  destroy  the  political  asy¬ 
lum,  heretofore  maintained  in  this  country  for  revolutionists  of 
all  lands,  as  the  officials  of  one  country  cannot  sit  in  judgment 
over  the  methods  of  political  strife  and  civil  war  in  another 
country;  and, 

Whereas,  Senator  Roofs  amendment  providing  for  deporta¬ 
tion  without  trial  of  any  alien  who  shall  take  advantage  of  his 
residence  in  the  United  States  to  conspire  with  others  for  the 
violent  overthrow  of  a  foreign  government,  recognized  by  the 
United  States,”  passed  by  the  United  States  Senate  without  a 
dissenting  vote,  seeks  to  establish  in  this  country  a  passport 
system  for  aliens,  thus  destroying  at  once  the  principle  that  it 
is  the  right  of  every  people  to  overthrow  by  force,  if  necessary, 
a  despotic  government,  declared  in  the  Declaration  of  Indepen¬ 
dence,  and  the  principle  of  individual  freedom  from  police  super¬ 
vision,  heretofore  held  sacred  in  this  country;  therefore,  be  it 
i/:  Resolved,  By  the  Socialist  party  in  Indianapolis,  Ind.,  on  the 
16th  day  of  May,  1912,  in  National  Convention  assembled  that 
we  protest  against  this  attempt  of  the  United  States  Senate 
to  turn  the  government  of  this  country  into  a  detective  agency 
tor  foreign  governments  in  their  persecution  of  men  and  women 
righting  for  the  freedom  of  their  native  lands;  be  it  further 

Resolved,  That  we  demand  that  the  United  States  shall 
remain,  as  heretofore,  an  asylum  for  political  refugees  from  all 
countries,  without  any  distinction  as  to  political  crimes  or  super¬ 
vision  of  political  refugees;  and  be  it  further 

Resold  That  a  copy  of  these  resolutions  be  forwarded  to 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  Speaker  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  and  to  every  member  of  the  House  Committee 
on  Immigration  and  Naturalization. 

Restrictions  on  Citizenship. 

Whereas,  The  courts  in  charge  of  naturalization  have  shown 
h?K  f=  I  !°  ar?C  thG  interPretation  of  the  rule  which  pro- 
naturalization  of  avowed  anarchists,  so  that  anyone 

7n Uie\lnuthe  present  system  0f  society  has  been  held 
t0  kemebgible  to  become  an  American  citizen;  and, 

•  Whereas,  This  tendency  found  a  most  aggravated  expression 
n  the  revocation  of  the  citizenship  of  Leonard  Olsson,  a  Social- 

thereVorJbriT^  Washington’  by  JudSe  Cornelius  Hanford; 

Resolved,  That  the  Socialist  party  in  convention  assembled 
enters  its  most  emphatic  protest  against  such  procedure  and 
points  out  that  the  denial  of  the  right  of  citizenship  to  foreign 
born  applicants  not  anarchists  because  they  hold  progressive 
deas  inevitably  f°rces  those  now  voters  into  the  ranks  of  those 
who  believe  in  force  and  violence;  and  be  it  further 

p  ^e.SoIved;  That  a  copy  of  these  resolutions  be  sent  to  the 
Secretary  of  Commerce  and  Labor,  and  that  we  demand  of  him 
that  an  order  be  issued  to  the  effect  that  this  rule  in  naturaliza- 


tion  cases  shall  be  strictly  interpreted  and  not  enlarged  to  in¬ 
clude  persons  who  simply  hold  Socialistic  or  progressive  social 
ideas. 

2.  Socialism  in  Brief. 

(a)  WHAT  IS  SOCIALISM. 

(A  Leaflet  issued  by  the  Socialist  Party  National  Office.) 

Socialism  stands  for  ’a  new  civilization. 

It  is  a  world-wide  movement  of  the  working  class  and  its 
sympathizers  for  better  food,  better  clothing,  better  homes, 
more  education  and  culture — in  short,  a  more  abundant  life. 

Socialism  starts  out  with  two  terrific  propositions,  to-wit: 

1.  All  men  are  brothers,  not  merely  brothers  in  name,  but 
brothers  in  fact,  with  a  common  blood,,  common  interests, 
common  cause.  The  welfare  of  one  of  us  is  the  brotherly  con¬ 
cern  of  all  of  us,  and  being  brethren,  all  war  and  strife  and 
hatred  should  cease. 

2.  The  things  that  men  need  in  common  should  be  owned 
in  common  and  supplied  for  the  Common  Good,  not  for  private 
profit. 

With  these  ideas  in  mind  the  Socialists  make  some  very 
definite  constructive  proposals: 

In  the  political  field  we  demand  the  rule  of  the  people,  i.  e. 
democracy.  In  the  economic  field  we  demand  the  public  owner¬ 
ship  and  operation  of  public  utilities. 

What  Socialism  Means. 

Broadly  speaking,  it  means: 

First.  That  the  means  of  production  and  distribution  of 
wealth  which  are  social  and  public  in  nature  should  be  publicly 
owned.  This  would  include  the  coal,  oil  and  iron  lands,  the 
rivers,  forests  and  other  natural  resources.  It'  would  also  in¬ 
clude  all  the  great  public  utilities,  such  as  railroads,  telegraphs, 
express  companies,  and  in  short  all  the  great  trusts  and  monop¬ 
olies. 

Second.  That  all  social  utilities,  being  collectively  owned, 
shall  be  under  democratic  control  for  the  benefit  of  all  who 
work,  in  order  that  profit-making,  whereby  one  person  exploits 
another,  shall  be  abolished. 

Third.  That  all  who  are  able  shall  be  given  opportunity 
to  labor  in  the  collectively  owned  industries  and  each  shall 
receive  the  full  product  of  his  toil. 

Fourth.  That  each  shall  have  for  his  own  private  property 
all  that  his  labor  earns  of  food  and  clothing,  shelter,  house  and 
home — books,  music,  education,  recreation  and  culture. 

Fifth.  That  the  government,  municipal,  state  and  national, 
shall  be  made  truly  democratic,  so  that  the  will  and  wish  of  the 
people  may  be  the  law  of  the  land.  This  will  be  accomplished 
by  means  of  the  initiative,  referendum,  recall,  proportional  rep¬ 
resentation  and  other  measures  making  for  popular  government. 

What  the  Authorities  Say. 

Against  these  simple,  straightforward  proposals  of  Socialism 
there  has  been  let  loose  a  flood  of  misrepresentation.  It  is 
said  to  be  anarchy,  atheism,  free  love,  “divide  up”  and  a  lot  of 
other  stupid  and  impossible  things. 

No  intelligent  person  holds  these  views;  and  anyone  who 
would  take  the  pains  to  turn  to  an  ordinary  dictionary  or  ency¬ 
clopedia  would  soon  learn  differently. 

We  quote  a  few  of  the  recognized  authorities: 

1.  “Socialism. — A  theory  of  society  that  advocates  a  more 
precise,  orderly  and  harmonious  arrangement  of  the  social  rela- 


9 


tions  than  that  which  has  hitherto  prevailed.” — Webster’s  Dic¬ 
tionary. 

2.  “A  science  of  reconstructing  society  on  an  entirely  new 
basis  by  substituting  the  principle  of  association  for  that  of 
competition  in  every  branch  of  industry.” — Worcester’s  Diction¬ 
ary. 

3.  The  Encyclopedia  Britannica  says:  “The  ethics  of  social¬ 
ism  are  closely  akin  to  the  ethics  of  Christianity,  if  not  iden¬ 
tical  with  them.” 

4.  The  Standard  Dictionary  defines  Socialism  as:  “A  theory 
of  civil  policy  that  aims  to  secure  the  reconstruction  of  society, 
increase  of  wealth,  and  a  more  equal  distribution  of  the  prod¬ 
ucts  of  labor  thru  the  public  collective  ownership  of  land  and 
capital  (as  distinguished  from  property),  and  the  public  collec¬ 
tive  management  of  all  industries.” 

5.  “Socialism  seeks  such  an  organization  of  life,  as  shall 
secure  for  every  one  of  the  most  complete  development  of  his 
powers.”  “It  is  applied  Christianity — theGolden  Rule  applied 
to  everyday  life.” — Prof.  Richard  T.  Ely. 

You  are  often  told  that  Socialism  wpuld  destroy  property, 
abolish  private  ownership  or  divide  up  the  wealth  of  the  world. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  Socialists  have  no  more  idea  of  abolishing 
property  than  they  do  of  abolishing  life.  They  have  no  more 
idea  of  dividing  up  the  world’s  wealth  and  sharing  it  than  they 
have  of  cutting  up  their  own  bodies.  Our  idea  is  that  private 
monopoly  in  the  great  resources  of  life  means  wealth  for  the 
few — and  toil,  hardship  and  misery  for  the  many.  We  propose 
therefore  that  the  public  utilities  shall  be  owned  by  all  in  order 
that  all  may  be  secure  in  the  possession  of  the  private  property 
which  their  labor  earns. 

What  Private  Monopoly  Does  to  Us. 

We  all  observe  how  the  trusts  are  constantly  advancing  the 
cost  of  living. 

The  owners  of  these  trusts  and  monopolies  virtually  decide 
how  much  we  shall  pay  for  our  bread  and  our  meat,  how  much 
for  our  kerosene  and  our  coal,  and  how  much  we  are  to  spend 
for  our  food,  clothing,  houses,  etc. 

They  also  decide  what  wages  we  shall  receive  and  the  condi¬ 
tions  of  our  labor.  In  other  words,  the  trusts  decide  how  well 
or  how  poorly  we  are  to  live,  or  whether  we  live  at  all  or  not. 

Wage  Workers  Not  the  Only  Sufferers. 

And  the  wage  workers  are  by  no  means  the  only  ones  who 
suffer  from  these  conditions. 

With  every  increase  of  power  and  concentration  of  wealth 
the  educated  and  professional  class  is  forced  more  and  more 
into  dependence  upon  the  capitalist.  Our  teachers,  professors, 
speakers,  newspaper  editors  and  writers,  and  even  ministers, 
doctors  and  all  professional  men,  are  more  and  more  at  the 
mercy  of  the  capitalist  system,  and  brought  into  abject  depen¬ 
dence. 

Other  Parties  Offer  No  Remedy. 

These  conditions  are  before  our  eyes. 

And  what  remedy  do  the  old  political  parties  bring  the 
people? 

Parties,  like  individuals,  act  from  motives  of  self-interest. 

Now  the  old  parties  are  owned  by  the  capitalists.  The 
Republican  party  by  the  big  capitalist;  the  Democratic  party  by 
the  small  capitalists;  and  the  Progressive  party  by  the  “reform” 
capitalists  who  are  dissatisfied  with  the  way  the  other  capitalists 
are  managing  capitalism  and  want  a  “regulated”  capitalism. 


10 


But  they  are  all  capitalist  parties.  They  all  stand  for  capital¬ 
ism — for  the  private  ownership  and  operation  of  the  monopolies 
and  the  trusts. 

There  is  only  one  party  that  offers  a  real  remedy;  that  stands 
for  an  entirely  new  ideal;  that  stands  against  capitalism  and  for 
the  public  ownership  and  democratic  control  of  the  great  indus¬ 
tries  of  the  nation. 

That  is  the  Socialist  party. 

What  It  Would  Mean. 

Let  us  consider  what  the  changes  proposed  by  Socialism 
would  mean: 

1.  First  of  all,  it  would  mean  that  the  wages  of  the  workers 
would  be  progressively  increased  until  they  received,  as  nearly 
as  possible,  the  full  products  of  their  toil. 

2.  It  would  reduce  the  cost  of  living  for  every  one.  The 
trusts  being  publicly  owned  and  operated  at  cost  and  without 
profit — the  cost  of  the  necessities  of  life  would  be  reduced. 

3.  Exploitation — or  the  power  of  one  man  or  set  of  men  to 
live  off  the  labor  of  another  man  or  set  of  men — would  be  at 
an  end. 

4.  No  one  being  able  to  live  off  the  labor  of  another,  all 
would  be  .  compelled  to  work — to  render  some  useful  service. 
All  who  were  able  to  work  and  refused  to  do  so,  if  there  should 
be  such  under  Socialism,  would  receive  what  they  produced — 
nothing  if  they  produce  nothing.  The  Bible  says:  “If  a  man 
will  not  work,  neither  shall  he  eat.” 

5.  There  would  be  no  unemployed — no  hungry,  weary, 
hopeless,  disheartened  men  tramping  th'e  city  streets  and  coun¬ 
try  roads  begging  for  work  and  unable  to  find  it.  The  state, 
controlling  all  natural  resources  and  public  utilities,  would  find 
work  for  all. 

6.  Every  young  man  and  woman  being  able  to  easily  earn 
a  living,  marriage  would  be  promoted,  the  home  will  be  saved, 
and  prostitution  and  vice  will  be  robbed  of  their  victims. 

7.  Every  -adult — father  or  mother — receiving  the  full  product 
of  their  toil,  there  would  be  no  need  of  child  labor,  which  forth¬ 
with  would  cease. 

8.  The  fear  of  .want  and  poverty  -yvould  be  removed;  all 
children  would  be  given  an  equal  opportunity  for  an  education; 
and  the  -aged  and  disabled  would  be  pensioned  and  protected. 

9.  The  workers,  receiving  their  full  -and  just  dues,  strikes 
and  lockouts  would  end.  Henceforth  industrial  peace  would 
prevail. 

10.  Socialism  would  establish  international  peace  upon  the 
earth.  There  would  be  no  need  to  fight  for  foreign  markets. 
The  economic  reason  for  wars  would  be  removed. 

And  finally,  many  of  the  most  devoted  believers  in  the 
Golden  Rule,  the  brotherhood  of  man  and  the  spiritual  ideals 
of  religion,  have  discovered  that  Socialism  is  the  program  by 
which  their  hopes  may  be  realized. 

The  Greatest  Movement  in  the  World  Today. 

No  wonder  then  that  Socialism  grows.  No  wonder  it  has 
become  -already  the  greatest  political  movement  in  the  world 
today. 

Beginning  in  Germany  about  sixty-five  years  ago,  it  has 
grown  steadily  in  spite  of  tremendous  difficulties,  misrepresen¬ 
tations,  slanders,  persecutions,  exile,  prison  and  death — until  to¬ 
day  it  casts  more  than  11,500,000  votes,  elects  832  representa¬ 
tives  to  the  national  parliaments  and  more  than  50,000  to  the 
municipal  councils  of  the  world. 

Here  in  the  United  States  its  vote  has  grown  from  13,704  in 
1890,  to  901,062  in  1912. 

At  the  time  of  our  latest  reports  (1913)  it  had  21  members 


in  9  different  state  legislatures;  43  mayors  of  cities  and  towns, 
and  not  less  than  650  public  elected  officials. 

And  the  membership  and  the  vote  both  grow  rapidly  every 
year. 

The  Most  Practical  Thing  in  the  World. 

Socialism  is  the  most  practical  thing  in  the  world. 

Our  nation  already  owns  its  postal  system,  its  public  schools; 
we  build  the  Panama  canal  and  carry  out  vast  public  enter¬ 
prises.  Our  cities  own  their  water  plants,  lighting  plants,  and 
are  beginning  to  take  over  street  car  lines. 

In  the  last  few  years  a  very  large  number  of  European  cities 
have  taken  over  and  are  now  operating  street  railroads,  gas, 
water  and  electric  light  plants  and  other  public  utilities.  Every 
such  acquisition  is  a  step  toward  Socialism.  Almost  all  the 
railroads  of  the  world,  outside  of  the  United  States,  are  now 
owned  by  the  various  governments.  Every  time  a  government 
acquires  a  railroad  it  takes  a  step  towards  Socialism. 

Everywhere  the  tendency  is  in  that  direction. 

From  this  time  on  Socialism  is  bound  to  come  rapidly. 

A  Constructive  Program. 

.  The  Socialist  party  stands  squarely  upon  the  principles  of 
international  Socialism.  It  relies  upon  the  education  of  the 
people  and  upon  the  development  of  the  industrial  forces. 
Both  of  these  factors  make  for  Socialism. 

.  The  Socialist  party,  while  it  is  revolutionary  in  its  final  aim, 
is  none  the  less  distinctly  evolutionary  and  constructive  in  its 
method. 

Every  measure;  that  improves  conditions  is  welcomed  and 
supported  by  Socialists  for  many  reasons. 

In  the  first  place,  by  such  measures  we  can  stop  the  increas¬ 
ing  pauperization,  and  consequently  also  the  enervation  of  the 
masses  of  people. 

But  the  main  reason  for  our  favoring  such  measures  is 
because  if  logically  carried  out,  they  offer  the  possibility  of  a 
peaceful,  lawful  and  orderly  transformation  of  society. 

Our  Final  Aim. 

Our  aim  is:  The  free  democracy  with  equal  economic  and 
political  rights;  the  free  society  with  associative  labor.  The 
welfare  of  all  is  for  us  the  one  end  of  the  state  and  society. 

We  seek  justice  and  fight  injustice. 

We  seek  free  labor  and  attack  wage  slavery. 

We  seek  the  prosperity  of  all  and  struggle  against  misery. 

.  We  seek  the  education  of  all  and  fight  ignorance  and  barbar¬ 
ism. 

We  seek  peace  and  order  and  combat  the  murder  of  people 
the  class  war  and  social  anarchy. 

,  We  seek  the  Socialist  people’s  state  and  attack  the  despotic 
class  state. 

Whoever  desires  these  things  and  struggles  for  them,  let 

him  unite  with  us  and  work  with  all  his  strength  for  our  cause _ 

for  the  cause  of  Socialism— for  the  cause  of  humanity,  whose 
victory  will  soon  be  gained. 

(b)  THE  MOST  FREQUENT  OBJECTIONS  TO  SOCIAL¬ 
ISM  ANSWERED. 

By  A.  W.  Ricker. 

(A  Leaflet  Published  by  the  Socialist  Party.) 

That  Socialists  Want  to  Divide  Up. 

Do  you  mean  by  this  a  division  of  the  farms,  houses,  money 
and  wealth  of  the  country?  This  would  not  only  be  impossible 
but  foolish.  We  do  not  stand  for  a  division  of  property,  but 


12 

the  PUBLIC  OWNERSHIP  of  certain  kinds  of  property.  We 
now  publicly  own  the  streets,  highways,  schools,  postoffice  sys- 
tem,  and  m  some  places  the  electric  light  and  water  systems. 
We  have  not  divided  the  postoffices,  neither  could  we  if  we 
wanted  to.  We  could  not  divide  what  is  called  the  machinery 
of  production  and  distribution,  such  as  the  shops,  factories 
mines  and  railroads.  These  industries  are  not  owned  by  private 
individuals  now,  but  by  co-operative  associations  of  capitalists, 
called  trusts.”  The  Socialists  propose  to  transfer  the  title  of 
property  now  owned  by  the  trusts  to  the  people  of  the  United 
States.  The  only  thing  we  have  ever  thought  of  dividing  is 
the  opportunity  to  work  in  the  great  public  enterprises  which, 
under  Socialism,  will  be  open  to  both  men  and  women.  In 
other  words,  we  propose  to  divide  the  jobs. 

That  Socialism  Will  Do  Away  With  Private  Property. 

On  the  contrary,  Socialism  will  make  it  easier  to  get  private 
property.  The  workers  have  very  little  private  property.  More 
than  80  per  cent  of  the  working  people  live  in  rented  houses. 
Their  private  possessions  are  few  and  almost  worthless.  Their 
wages  are  all  consumed  in  cost  of  living,  leaving  no  chance  to 
accumulate  private  property.  The  capitalists  ultimately  get  the 
wealth  created  by  labor.  When  the  ownership  of  the  indutsries 
on  which  profits  are  filched  from  labor  passes  to  the  people 
then  the  useful  workers  will  get,  not  only  what  they  now  receive, 
but  also  that  part  of  their  earnings  which  go  to  the  capitalists 
as  profit.  It  will  then  be  possible  for  the  working  people  to 
own  their,  own  homes  and  such  .other  property  as  ought  to 
belong  to  individuals* 

That  Socialism  Is  Against  Religion. 

Socialism  is  an  economic  and  not  a  religious  question.  What 
a  man  believes  or  does  not  believe  about  religion  does  not  enter 
into  the  solution  of  the  bread  and.  butter  question.  The  cap¬ 
italist  class  exploits  and  robs  the  working  class  regardless  of 
what  the  latter,  believe  about  religion,  or  what  is  their  color, 
race,  or  sex.  Since  the  capitalists  exploit  all  of  us  in  common, 
regardless  of  whether  we  are  Catholic  or  Protestant,  black  or 
white,  male  or  female,  we  therefore  ought  to  stand  solidly 
together  as  a  united  working  class  fighting  for  one  common  end 
—our  own  industrial  freedom.  The  person  who  seeks  to  divide 
the  working  class  by  appealing  to  race  or  religious  prejudice  is 
an  enemy  of  the  working  people. 

That  Socialism  Is  Opposed  to  the  Government. 

Socialism  is  against  the  government  only  in  so  far  as  the 
government  is  administered  in  the  interest  of  the  capitalist  class 
and  opposed  to  the  working  class.  The  functions  of  government 
will  be  greatly  extended  under  Socialism.  Its  chief  function 
will  be  the  co-ordination  and  administration  of  the  industries 
of  the  nation.  It  will  also  serve  as  a  bureau  of  information 
and  a.  general  clearing  house  of  industrial  conservation  and 
administration.  What  is  now  devoted  to  battleships  and  arma¬ 
ments  will  then  be  devoted  to  education,  science  and  improve¬ 
ment  of  industry. 

That  Socialism  Will  Reduce  Everyone  to  a  Dead  Level. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  capitalism  that  is  reducing  the  socially 
useful  class  to  a  dead  level — the  level  of  the  cheapest  wage  for 
which  the  workers  may  be  had.  In  this  dead  level,  working  side 
by  side,  are  all  colors,  both  sexes,  and  people  from  every  race, 
and  there  is  no  escape  from  this  dead  level  under  capitalism.  If 
Socialism  does  establish  a  level,  that  level  will  certainly  be  a 


S4— „  '  .  ■  - 


13 


higher  one  than  is  now  possible  for  80  per  cent  of  tne  population. 

That  Socialism  Will  Destroy  the  Home  and  Substitute  Free 
Love  for  Marriage. 

This  is  the  last  argument  of  a  dishonest  person.  Many  honest 
people  do  not  -at  first  understand  the  economic  program  of 
Socialism,  but  no  honest  person  ever  charged  the  Socialists  with 
a  desire  to  abolish  marriage  and  return  to  a  state  of  barbarism, 
simply  because  nowhere  in  the  literature  of  Socialism  is  such  a 
preposterous  thing  even  hinted  at.  Socialists  believe  that  women 
are  not  now  possessed  of  all  the  rights  to  which  they  are  as 
human  beings  entitled.  We  propose  that  when  it  is  possible  for 
all  men  to  have  employment,  as  it  will  be  under  Socialism,  that 
the  same  opportunity  shall  be  open  to  women.  This  will  forever 
end  prostitution  for  profit,  for  no  woman  will  sell  her  body  for 
bread  when  it  is  possible  to  sell  her  labor  power,  and  thus  honor¬ 
ably  support  herself.  Neither  will  she  rush  into  matrimony 
merely  for  the  sake  of  being  supported;  nor  will  she  become 
a  burden  added  to  that  which  the  already  overloaded  man  must 
carry  as  he  does  today.  She  will  be  an  equal  -and  a  partner.  In¬ 
stead  of  destroying  the  monogamic  home,  Socialism  will  give 
it  the  first  fair  chance  to  exist  it' has  ever  had.  The  home  under 
capitalism  is  assailed  by  terrible  enemies,  such  as  prostitution, 
poverty,  disease  and  ignorance.  These  are  the  home-breakers, 
every  one  of  which  has  an  economic  cause  for  existence.  These 
home-breakers  will  disappear  under  Socialism. 

That  We  Can’t  Get  Possession  of  the  Machinery  of  Production 
and  Distribution  Now  Held  by  the  Capitalist  Class. 

Sure,  we  can.  And  by  perfectly  legal  and  constitutional 
methods,  too.  Some  we  can  buy.  Some  we  can  build  ourselves. 
Some  we  can  get  by  foreclosure.  Some  by  making  provision  for 
public  ownership  in  the  franchises,  and  some  we  can  get  by 
exercising  the  right  of  eminent  domain. 

That  You  Can’t  Change  Human  Nature. 

Then  you  ought  to  quit  preaching  to  people  to  be  Christlike. 
You  can  change  humanity  just  as  you  can  change  the  small  wild 
peach  to  the  big  juicy  tame  one,  the  sour  crabapple  to  the  big  red 
apple  of  the  orchard,  the  little  speckled  ear  of  corn  of  the  Indian 
“to  the  big  yellow  one  of  the  modern  cornfield.  Human  nature 
has  changed  from  savagery  to  barbarism,  then  to  civilization.  It 
will  change  to  Socialism,  and  come  to  measurable  perfection  just 
like  the  sour  crabapple  became,  under  proper  environment,  a  big 
mellow  pippin. 

That  Socialists  Propose  to  Take  the  Farmers’  Farms  Away  from 

Them. 

The  Socialist  has  no  thought  of  depriving  the  farmer  of  his 
farm,  but  on  the  contrary  is  after  the  fellow  who  is  now  robbing 
the  farmer.  The  trusts  have  not  taken  the  farmer’s  farm  but  they 
have  taken  the  farmer’s  markets,  through  the  trust  ownership  of 
the  railroads  and  transportation  system,  elevators,  storage 
houses  and  packing  houses.  When  the  produce  leaves  his  hands 
it  is  not*  ready  for  consumption.  It  must  pass  over  the  railroads 
of  the  capitalists,  through  their  mills  and  storage  houses,  ware¬ 
houses,  etc.  By  owning  this  finishing  and  distributing  machinery 
the  capitalist  takes  the  profit  and  makes  the  cost  of  living  high. 
The  capitalist  also  owns  the  minerals  and  the  lumber  which 
enter  into  the  manufacture  of  the  machinery — the  tools  which 
the  farmer  must  use  to  prepare  the  soil,  care  for  -and  harvest  the 
crops.  Socialism  will  give  the  farmer  not  only  publicly  owned 
markets,  but  publicly  owned  transportation  facilities,  and  machin¬ 
ery  made  at  the  labor  cost  of  production.  The  question  which 


14 

the  farmer  must  decide  very  shortly  is:  “Shall  I  continue  to 
vote  with  the  capitalists  who  are  skinning  me,  or  with  the  wage- 
working  class?  Shall  I  vote  for  Capitalism,  which  offers  me  no 
relief,  or  for  Socialism,  which  will  set  us  all  free? 

That  People  Won’t  Rent  Farms  Under  Socialism. 

You  are  right.  Some  will  at  first,  but  when  we  get  things 
going  it  will  be  hard  to  find  a  man  foolish  enough  to  give  half  of 
his  products  in  rents  when  he  can  get  all  that  he  produces  on  a 
publicly  owned  job.  The  men  who  own  the  farms  will  have  to 
do  the  farming.  We  Socialists  see  clearly  that  we  will  take 
possession  of  all  the  land  in  the  districts  that  are  subject  to  irri¬ 
gation,  because  this  kind  of  farming  can  be  done  co-operatively 
even  now  much  better  than  it  can  be  done  individually.  A 
thorough  reconstruction  of  the  farming  system  is  bound  to 
come.  Socialists  will  not  force  a  change  on  the  people,  but  this 
change  will  come  in  response  to  the  wish  and  judgment  of  the 
farming  population.  Inasmuch  as  nearly  one-half  of  all  farmers 
are  now  tenants,  the  demand  for  a  change  in  farm  tenure  will 
not  be  far  behind  that  for  a  change  in  the  present  wage  system. 

That  Socialism  Will  Destroy  Personal  Liberty  and  Force  People 
to  Do  What  They  Don’t  Want  to  Do. 

Mistaken  again.  Socialism  will  increase  personal  liberty  for 
those  who  have  but  little  now.  None  of  us  do  exactly  as  we 
want  to  do,  not  even  ^the  rich.  Do  people  want  to  work  in 
sweat  shops;  do  children  want  to  work  in  factories  in  the  play¬ 
time  of  life;  do  women  like  to  wash  for  a  living;  does  anybody 
like  to  clean  spittoons;  do  sheriffs  like  to  evict  people  from  their 
o«ies,  o  judges  like  to  send  people  to  jail;  do  women  like  to 
become  prostitutes;  does  anyone  love  to  hoe  cotton  in  the  burn¬ 
ing  sun  You  see  we  do  things  because  it  is  necessary  to  do  them 
more  often  than  because  we  like  to.  There  will  be  many  un¬ 
pleasant  tasks  under  Socialism.  We  will  perform  them  with 
machinery  so  far  as  possible.  Our  hours  will  be  shorter  and 
our  work  pleasanter  and  safer,  but  we  will  still  do  some  thines 
we  don  t  want  to  do. 

That  Socialism  Won’t  Work. 

My  dear  skeptic,  you  have  said  that  about  every  piece  of  ma¬ 
chinery  invented.  You  said  of  the  first  railroad  that  the  noise  of 
the  engine  would  dry  up  the  cows  and  scare  the  chickens  out  of 
the  summer  crop  of  eggs.  Of  the  first  steamboat,  that  the  boiler 
would  blow  up  and  the  ship  couldn’t  carry  enough  coal  to  make 
a  trip  across  the  sea.  A  group  of  farmers  stood  about  the  first 
self-binder  ever  put  on  the  platform  of  your  dealer  and  with  a 
knowing  look  they  said:  “Too  much  machinery,  too  compli¬ 
cated,  never  will  work.”  When  the  first  cream  separator  came 
out  ow  you  laughed  at  the  idea  of  a  piece  of  machinery  getting 
the  cream  out  of  milk.  “Nothing  but  an  old  crock  in  the  cave 
would  do  it,  you  said.  When  the  first  cotton-picking  machine 
came  you  laughed.  “A  ‘nigger’  and  a  mule  is  the  only  way  to 
raise  cotton,”  you  said.  How  you  laughed  at  the  first  auto¬ 
mobile.  You  don’t  laugh  at  these  things  any  more.  They  are 
machines  which  DO  work,  but  most  of  them  are  made  to  work 
YOU.  All  are  used  in  such  a  way  as  to  harvest  a  bigger  crop 
for  the  trusts  to  divide.  Now  Socialism  is  an  economic  machine 
through  which  system  the  people  will  own  the  whole  process  of 
production  and  distribution.  Those  who  understand  it  know  it 
will  work.  Those  who  laugh  at  it  are  just  like  those  who  laughed 
at  the  binder  and  the  cream  separator. 

We  Can’t  Get  Along  Without  a  Boss. 

About  half  the  people  at  the  time  of  the  revolution  said  we 
couldn  t  get  along  without  a  king,  but  we  have.  Under  Socialism 
we  will  have  a  manager,  of  course,  of  each  industry.  Let’s  call 


15 


this  manager  the  boss  for  convenience.  NOW  the  boss  works 
for  the  capitalist.  Under  Socialism  he  will  work  for  YOU. 
NOW  he  figures  to  make  more  profits,  for  his  owner,  out  of  your 
hides.  Under  Socialism  he  will  study  to  make  hours  shorter 
and  work  safer  and  saner.  You  will  elect  him  and  if  he  isn’t 
satisfactory  you  will  fire  him  and  get  another. 

(c)  DEFINITIONS  OF  SOCIALISM. 

Standard  Dictionary. 

“Socialism  is  a  theory  of  civil  polity  that  aims  to  secure  the 
reconstruction  of  society,  increase  of  wealth,  and  a  more  equal 
distribution  of  the  products  of  labor,  through  the  collective 
ownership  of  land  and  capital,  and  the  public  collective  manage¬ 
ment  of  all  industries.  Its  motto  is  everyone  according  to  his 
deeds.”  (This  same  definition,  word  for  word,  is  given  in  the 
Standard  Encyclopedia.) 

Americanized  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  Twentieth  Century 
Edition. 

“With  regard  to  religion,  Socialism  has  been,  and  still  is, 
very  frequently  associated  with  irreligion  and  atheism.  The 
same  remark  applies  to  continental  liberalism,  and  partly  for  a 
like  reason;  the  absolute  governments  of  the  continent  have 
taken  the  existing  forms  of  religion  into  their  service  and  have 
repressed  religious  freedom.  On  religion,  as  on  marriage, 
Socialism  has  no  special  teaching.” 

Century  Dictionary. 

“Socialism  is  any  theory  or  system  of  social  organization 
which  would  abolish  entirely,  or  in  great  part,  the  individual 
effort  and  competition  on  which  modern  society  rests,  and  sub¬ 
stitute  for  it  co-operative  action;  would  introduce  a  more  perfect 
and  equal  distribution  of  the  products  of  labor  and  would  make 
land  and  capital  as  the  instruments  and  means  of  production, 
the  joint  possession  of  the  members  of  the  community.” 

Encyclopedia  Britannica. 

“Ethics  of  Socialism  and  the  ethics  of  Christianity  are 
identical.  The  general  tendency  is  to  regard  socialistic  any  inter¬ 
ference  undertaken  by  society  in  behalf  of  the  poor.  In  general, 
it  may  be  described  as  that  movement  which  seeks,  by  economic 
changes,-  to  destroy  the  existing  inequalities  of  the  world’s  social 
conditions.” 

Johnson’s  Universal  Cyclopedia. 

Socialism  is  a  moral  reform;  it  is  the  vices  of  mankind  and 
the  miseries  resulting  from  these  vices  to  which  Socialism  wishes 
to  put  an  end,  and  it  seeks  its  means  not  in  a  new  religious  issue, 
but  in  a  new  social  organization.” 

American  Year-Book,  Cyclopedia  and  Atlas. 

“No  word  has  been  more  abused  and  misunderstood  than 
:he  word  ‘Socialist.’  The  Socialist  is  not  an  anarchist;  they  are 
apposed  in  theory  and  practice.  The  Socialist  does  not  propose 
lo  destroy  the  family,  abolish  religion  or  divide  up  property,  nor 
does  he  seek  to  carry  out  his  ideas  by  riot  and  bloodshed.  In 
a  single  phrase,  Socialism  means  public  ownership  of  the  means 
af  production  and  working  class  control  of  the  government,  a 
:hance  to  work  for  all  who  will,  and  to  all  workers  the  full 
yalue  of  their  product.  The  typical  Socialist  is  a  rather  quiet  and 
thoughtful  workingman,  serene  in  time  of  trouble  and  self- 


16 


contained  in  the  day  of  victory.  He  realizes  that  the  world  will 
move  on  very  well  after  he  is  dead,  but  remembers  that  while 
he  lives  it  is  his  business  to  help  the  world  move.  He  considers 
himself  an  ally  of  eternal  laws  of  nature  and  is  proud  to  do  his 
little  part  in  the  great  cause.” 

Definitions  of  Individualism. 

Webster  s  Dictionary:  “An  excessive  or  exclusive  regard  forj 
ones  personal  interest;  self-interest;  selfishness.  (The  selfish¬ 
ness  of  small  proprietor  has  been  described  by  the  best  writers 
as  individualism.)” 

Thomas  Huxley:  “Anarchy  or  the  rule  of  one’s  self  is  the! 
logical  outcome  of  that  form  of  political  theory  which  for  the 
last  half  century  or  more  has  been  known  under  the  name  of 
Individualism.” 

Surplus  Value. 

Briefly  stated,  surplus  val(ie  is  that  value  produced  by  the 
workingman  which  he  does  not  get,  but  which  goes  to  the  em¬ 
ployer  and  constitutes  his  profits.  To  be  profitable  to  his 
employer  the.  wage  worker  must  produce  a  value  in  excess  oT 
what  he  receives  as  wages.  The  laborer  must  not  only  work  j 
long  enough  and  with  sufficient  intensity  each  day  to  produce  a 
value  equivalent  to  his  wage,  but  he  must  continue  his  labors  to  I 
create  the  portion  expected  and  required  by  his  master.  This  ( 
excess,  so  produced,  is  what,  in  Marxian  economics,  is  called 
surplus  value. 


Surplus  value  is  both  absolute  and  relative.  The  additional1 
value  created  by  prolonging  the  working  day  beyond  the  point 
necessary  to  reproduce  the  value  of  the  worker’s  wages  is  I 
called  absolute  surplus  value.  The  value  which  is  produced  by  i 
decreasing  the  necessary  or  paid  labor  of  the  worker  in  its  rela-  ^ 
tion  to  the  surplus  or  unpaid  labor  is  called  relative  surplus  value. 
Any  means,  of  increasing  the  intensity  of  labor  or  augmenting 
its  productiveness,  any  improvement  in  technics  or  methods 
which  shortens  the  time  in  which  a  given  commodity  is  pro¬ 
duced,  is  a  means  of  extracting  relative  surplus  value  The 
so-called  “Taylor  system,”  for  instance,  is  one  of  such  methods. 


Commodity. 

A  commodity  is  a  product  designed  for  exchange.  The 
wheat  a  farmer  produces  for  his  own  consumption  is  not  a  com¬ 
modity;  that  which  he  produces  for  sale  is  a  commodity.  Hence,  , 
in  the  words  of  Marx,  “the  wealth  of  those  societies  in  which 
the  capitalist  mode  of  production  prevails  presents  itself  as  an  , 
immense  accumulation  of  commodities.” 


17 


new  forms  of  struggle  in  place  of  the  old  ones. — Karl  Marx  and 
Frederick  Engels. 

Materialistic  Conception  of  History. 

In  every  historical  epoch  the  prevailing  mode  of  economic 
production  and  exchange  and  the  social  organization  neces¬ 
sarily  following  from  it,  form  the  basis  upon  which  is  built  up 
and  front  which  alone  can  be  explained  the  political  and  intel¬ 
lectual  history  of  that  epoch. — Karl  Marx  and  Frederick  Engels. 


3.  The  Socialist  Organization  and  Vote. 


(a)  STATISTICS  ON  SOCIALIST  PARTY  MEMBERSHIP. 
Socialist  Party  Membership,  1901-1912. 


Membership. 

Average 

for  each 

1901 . . 

.  10,000 

four-year 

period. 

1902.. 

.  20,000 

1903.. 

.  15,975 

1904.. 

. .  20,763 

1901-1904  . 

. 16,684 

1905.. 

. .  23,327 

1906.. 

.  26,784 

f 

1907.. 

.  29,270 

1908.. 

.  41,751 

1905-1908  . 

. . 30,282 

1909.. 

.  41,479 

1910.. 

1911.. 

1912 

1909-1912  . 

. 75,547 

Table  of  Membership,  Dues  and  National  Committeemen. 
For  Year  1913. 


m 


' 

a 

•  ® 

O  u 

E 

o 

2 

Hg 
©  © 
Ss 

H  © 

f  STATE 

m 

t, 

0) 

.a 

®  6 
bo  E 

ed  © 

_  © 
oj  E 
c  ® 

on 

© 

s 

©  a 

o  <u 

3 

© 

© 

>'2 

d  — 

Q 

2 

<2 

£S 

Alabama  . $ 

170.10 

283 

4 

287 

1 

Arizona  . 

299.05 

498 

8 

506 

1 

Arkansas  . 

347.60 

578 

46 

624 

1 

California  . 

3,513.95 

5,857 

400 

6,257 

2 

Colorado  . 

618.60 

1,030 

80 

1,110' 

1 

Connecticut  . 

918.25 

1,530 

83 

1,613 

1 

Delaware  . 

41.00 

68 

.... 

68 

1 

District  of  Columbia 

152.10 

253 

4 

257 

1 

Florida  . 

310.00 

517 

43 

560 

1 

Georgia  . 

55.00 

92 

3 

95 

1 

Idaho  . 

489.65 

818 

46 

864 

1 

Illinois  . 

4,047.35 

6,745 

67 

6,812 

3 

Indiana  . . . .' . 

1,378.50 

2,297 

53 

2,350 

1 

Iowa  . 

672.55 

1,121 

17 

1,138 

1 

Kansas  . 

1,070.75 

1,784 

96 

1,880 

1 

Kentucky  . 

220.00 

367 

14 

381 

1 

Louisiana  . 

215.00 

358 

31 

389 

1 

Maine  . 

239.70 

398 

398 

1 

Maryland  . 

298.50 

497 

.... 

497 

1 

Massachusetts  . 

2,895.30 

4,825 

76 

4,901 

a 

Michigan  . 

1,731.55 

2,885 

54 

2,939 

l 

Minnesota  . 

2,916.05 

4,860 

67 

4,927 

2 

Mississippi  . 

69.05 

114 

.... 

114 

1 

Missouri  . 

1,156.85 

1,928 

50 

1,978 

1 

Montana  . 

857.70 

1,428 

30 

1,458 

1 

Nebraska  . 

291.90 

486 

16 

602 

1 

Nevada  . 

402.40 

670 

.... 

670 

1 

New  Hampshire  .... 

341.85 

568 

.... 

568 

1 

New  Jersey  . 

2,087.65 

3,479 

167 

3,646 

a 

New  Mexico  . 

85.00 

140 

140 

l 

New  York  . 

6,164.35 

10,274 

‘783 

11,057 

4 

North  Carolina  . 

82.00 

137 

137 

1 

North  Dakota  . 

802.35 

1,337 

'  ‘i6 

1,353 

1 

Ohio  . 

3,396.55 

5,662 

142 

5,804 

2 

Oklahoma  . 

1,701.60 

2,836 

16 

2,852 

1 

Oregon  . 

925.65 

1,542 

68 

1,600 

1 

Pennsylvania  . 

5,822.16 

9,703 

283 

9.986 

4 

Rhode  Island  . 

298.25 

497 

.... 

497 

1 

South  Carolina  . 

45.00 

75 

2 

77 

1 

South  Dakota  . 

240.50 

400 

.... 

400 

1 

Tennessee  . 

138.55 

230 

13 

243 

1 

Texas  . 

1,263.15 

2,105 

2,105 

1 

Utah  . 

310.55 

518 

*  *ii 

629 

1 

Vermont  . 

133.45 

222 

10 

232 

1 

Virginia  . 

145.60 

242 

13 

255 

1 

Washington  . 

2,396.90 

3,993 

167 

4,160 

2 

West  Virginia . 

435.80 

726 

13 

739 

1 

Wisconsin  . 

2,487.90 

4,146 

52 

4,198 

2 

Wyoming  . 

Unorganized: 

414.15 

690 

3 

693 

1 

Alaska  . 

311.00 

260 

260 

. . 

Members  at  Large 

94.50 

79 

‘  "4 

83 

.  . 

Hawaii  . 

30.00 

25 

25 

$55,532.90 

Translator-secretaries,  exempt 

92,173 

members. . . 

3,041 

95,214 

743 

64 

Total  average  membership,  1913 .  95,957 


Rank  of  States  by  Per  Cent  of  Socialist  Members  (1913). 


STATE 

ge 

ership 

Year. 

G 

O 

d 

o  E 
dg 

X 

G 

d,Q 

SS.E 

Ha 

"3  x 

ao 
o  d 

d 

o  o 

« 

EhPh 

PhH 

1. 

Nevada  . 

81,875 

125 

2. 

Alaska  . 

64,356 

166 

3. 

Washington  . 

.  6,288 

.  1,667 

1,141,990 

182 

4. 

Idaho  . . 

325,594 

195 

5. 

Wyoming  . 

.  685 

145,965 

21* 

6. 

Montana  . 

....  1,647 

376,053 

228 

7 

Arizona  . 

.  687 

204,354 

297 

8] 

Oregon  . 

672,765 

30S 

9. 

Oklahoma  . 

.  5,027 

1,657,155 

330 

10. 

North  Dakota  . 

.  1,613 

577,056 

358 

11. 

Minnesota  . . 

2,075,708 

382 

12. 

California  . 

.  6,087 

2,377,549 

391 

13. 

Colorado  . 

.  1,976 

799,024 

404 

14, 

Utah  . . 

.  772 

373,351 

484 

15. 

Wisconsin  . , 

2,333,860 

224,326 

488 

16. 

Rhode  Island  . . 

.  423 

531 

17. 

Pennsylvania  . 

_  12,921 

7,665,111 

593 

18. 

Ohio  . 

.  7,272 

4,467,121 

614 

19. 

Kansas  . 

.  2,651 

1,690,949 

636 

20. 

New  Jersey  . . 

.  3,475 

2,537,167 

730 

21. 

Connecticut  . 

.  1,576 

1,114,756 

735 

22. 

New  Hampshire  . 

.  580 

430,572 

742 

23. 

Massachusetts  . 

_  4,437 

3,336,416 

752 

24. 

Indiana  . 

2,700,876 

766 

25. 

Florida  . 

.  939 

771,139 

809 

26. 

Texas  . 

3,896,542 

824 

27. 

Illinois  . 

.  6,742 

5,638,591 

836 

28. 

Michigan  . . 

.  3,247 

2,810,173 

865 

29. 

New  York  . . 

9,113,279 

940 

30. 

West  Virginia  . . 

.  1,198 

1,221,119 

1,019 

31. 

Missouri  . .  . .  . . 

.  2,795 

3,293,335 

1,178 

32. 

New  Mexico  . 

_  278 

327,396 

1,178 

33. 

Iowa  . 

2,224,771 

1,184 

34. 

District  of  Columbia . 

.  273 

331,069 

1,213 

35. 

Vermont  . 

.  281 

355,956 

1,267 

36. 

Nebraska  . 

.  799 

1,068,484 

1,337 

37. 

Arkansas  . 

_  1,121 

1,574,449 

1,405 

38. 

South  Dakota  . 

583,888 

1,505 

39. 

Delaware  . 

.  132 

202,322 

1,533 

40. 

Maine  . 

742,371 

1,603 

41. 

Maryland  . 

.  629 

1,294,450 

2,058 

42. 

Louisiana  . . 

1,656,383 

2,969 

43. 

Kentucky  . 

.  618 

2,289,905 

4,421 

44. 

Tennessee  . . . 

2,184,789 

2,061,612 

5,921 

45. 

Virginia  . 

.  220 

9,371 

46. 

North  Carolina  . 

2,206,287 

10,121 

47. 

Alabama  . . 

.  211 

2,138,093 

10,133 

48. 

Mississippi  . . 

1,797,114 

12,480 

49. 

Georgia  . 

.  182 

2,609,121 

14,836 

50. 

South  Carolina  . 

.  100 

1,515,400 

15,164 

19 


(b)  STATISTICS  ON  SOCIALIST  VOTE. 
Growth  of  Socialist  Vote  in  United  States. 


Year. 

1888 . 

Soc 

Party. 

S.  L.  P. 
2,068 

Total. 

2,068 

1890 . 

13,704 

13,704 

1892 . . 

21,512 

21,512 

1894 . 

30,020 

30,020 

1896 . 

36,275 

36,275 

1898 . 

1900 . 

.  96,931 

82,204 

33,405 

82,204 

130,336 

1902 . 

.223,494 

53,763 

277,257 

1904 . 

.408,230 

33,546 

441,776 

1906 . 

331,043 

20,265 

351,308 

1908 . 

424,488 

14,021 

438,509 

1910 . 

607,674 

34,115  • 

641,789 

1912 . 

901,062 

30,344 

931,406 

STATE: 

Socialist  Vote  by  States. 

1900  1904  1908 

1912 

•Per  cent 
gain  over 
1908 

Alabama  . 

928 

853 

1,399 

3,029 

117 

Arizona  . 

1,304 

.1,912 

3,163 

•  65 

Arkansas  . 

27 

1,816 

5,842 

8,153 

40 

California  . 

7,572 

29,533 

28,659 

79,201 

176 

Colorado  . 

684 

4,304 

7,974 

16,418 

106 

Connecticut  .... 

1,029 

4,543 

5,113 

10,056 

97 

Delaware  . 

57 

146 

240 

556 

132 

Florida  . 

603 

2,337 

3,747 

4,806 

28 

Georgia  . 

197 

584 

1,028 

76 

Idaho  . 

4,954 

6,400 

11,960 

87 

Illinois  . 

9,687 

69,255 

34,711 

81,249 

134 

Indiana  . 

2,314 

12,013 

13,476 

36,931 

174 

Iowa  . 

2,742 

14,847 

8,287 

16,967 

105 

Kansas  . . 

1,605 

15,494 

12,420 

26,779 

116 

Kentucky  . 

770 

3,602 

4,185 

11,647 

178 

Louisiana  . 

995 

2,538 

5,249 

107 

Maine  . 

'  878 

2,103 

1,758 

2,541 

45 

Maryland  . 

908 

2,247 

2,323 

3,996 

72 

Massachusetts  . . 

9,716 

13,004 

10,781 

12,662 

17 

Michigan . 

2,826 

3,065 

8,941 

11,586 

23,211 

100 

Minnesota  . 

11,692 

14,527 

27,505 

89 

Mississippi  . 

.*.... 

393 

978 

2,061 

111 

Missouri  . 

6,128 

13,009 

15,431 

28,466 

82 

Montana  . 

708 

5,676 

5,855 

10,885 

86 

Nebraska  . 

823 

7,412 

3,524 

10,185 

190 

Nevada  . 

925 

2,103 

3,313 

68 

New  Hampshire. 

790 

1,090 

1,299 

1,980 

52 

New  Jersey . 

4,609 

9,587 

10,253 

15,928 

55 

New  Mexico  .... 

162 

1,056 

2,859 

171 

New  York . 

12,069 

36,883 

38,451 

63,381 

65 

North  Carolina. . 

. 

124 

345 

1,025 

197 

North  Dakota... 

518 

1,017 

2,421 

6,966 

188 

Ohio  . 

4,847 

36,260 

33,785 

89,930 

166 

Oklahoma  . 

815 

4,443 

21,779 

42,262 

94 

Oregon  . 

1,495 

7,651 

7,339 

13,343 

82 

Pennsylvania  . .  . 

4,831 

21,863 

33,913 

83,614 

145 

Rhode  Island  .  . . 

956 

1,365 

2,049 

50 

South  Carolina.. 

22 

101 

164 

62 

South  Dakota... 

*  169 

3,138 

2,846 

4,662 

64 

Tennessee  . 

410 

1,354 

1,870 

3,504 

87 

Texas  . 

1,846 

2,791 

7,870 

24,896 

216 

Utah  . 

717 

5,767 

4,795 

9,023 

84 

Vermont  . 

371 

844 

547 

928 

70 

Virginia  . 

145 

218 

255 

820 

222 

Washington  .... 

2,066 

10,023 

14,177 

40,134 

183 

West  Virginia  .  . 

268 

1,572 

3,679 

15,336 

317 

Wisconsin  . 

7,095 

28,220 

28,164 

33,481 

21 

Wyoming  . 

1,077 

1,715 

2,760 

61 

Totals  . 

96,991 

407,257 

424,488 

901,062 

112 

•Estimated  by  W.  J.  Ghent. 


20 


Rank  of  States  by  Number  of  Socialist  Votes  in  1912. 


1.  Ohio  .  89,930 

2.  Pennsylvania  .  83,614 

3.  Illinois  .  81,249 

4.  California  .  70,201 

5.  New  York  .  63,381 

6.  Oklahoma  .  42,262 

7.  Washington  .  40,134 

8.  Indiana  .  36,931 

9.  Wisconsin  .  33,481 

10.  Missouri  .  28,466 

11.  Minnesota  .  27,505 

12.  Kansas  .  26,779 

13.  Texas .  24,896 

14.  Michigan  .  23,211 

15.  Iowa .  16,967 

16.  Colorado  .  16,418 

17.  New  Jersey .  15,928 

18.  West  Virginia .  15,336 

19.  Oregon  .  13,343 

20.  Massachusetts  .  12,662 

21.  Idaho  .  11,960 

22.  Kentucky  .  11,647 

23.  Montana  . 10,885 

24.  Nebraska  .  10,185 

25.  Connecticut .  10,056 


26.  Utah .  9,021 

27.  Arkansas  .  8,151 

28.  North  Dakota .  6,966 

29.  Louisiana  .  5,241 


30.  Florida  .  4,80< 

31.  South  Dakota .  4,661 

32.  Maryland  .  3,99< 

33.  Tennessee .  3,504 

34.  Nevada  .  3,311 

35.  Arizona .  3,161 

36.  Alabama  .  3,021 

37.  New  Mexico .  2,851 

38.  Wyoming  .  2,76< 

39.  Maine .  2,64: 

40.  Mississippi .  2,061 

41.  Rhode  Island  . 2,041 

42.  New  Hampshire  ....  1,98( 

43.  Georgia  .  1,02? 

44.  North  Carolina .  1,025 

45.  Vermont  .  923 

46.  Virginia  .  820 

47.  Delaware  .  556 

48.  South  Carolina .  164 


Total . 901,062 


Rank  of  States  by  Per  Cent,  of  Socialist  Votes  in  1912. 


1.  Oklahoma . 

2.  Nevada  ........ 

3.  Montana  . 

4.  Arizona  . 

5.  Washington 

6.  California  . 

7.  Idaho  . 

8.  Oregon  . 

9.  Florida  . 

10.  Ohio  . 

11.  Wisconsin  . 

12.  Texas  . 

13.  Minnesota . 

14.  North  Dakota  .  . 

15.  Utah  . 

16.  Kansas  . 

17.  Illinois  . 

18.  Pennsylvania  . . 

19.  Louisiana  . 

20.  Arkansas  . 

21.  Wyoming  . 

22.  Colorado  . 

23.  New  Mexico  ... 

24.  West  Virginia  . 

25.  Indiana  . 

26.  Connecticut  . .  . . 

27.  Michigan  . 

28.  Nebraska  . 

29.  Missouri  . 

30.  South  Dakota  .  . 

31.  New  York . 

32.  New  Jersey 

33.  Iowa  . 

34.  Mississippi 

35.  Rhode  Island  . 

36.  Massachusetts 

37.  Alabama  . 

88.  Kentucky  . 

39.  New  Hampshire 

40.  Maine  . 

41.  Maryland  . 

42.  Vermont  . 

43.  Tennessee  -  . . . 

44.  Delaware  . 

45.  Georgia  . 

46.  Virginia  . 

47.  North  Carolina 

48.  South  Carolina 


Per  cent 
Vote 
.  .16.61 
.  .16.61 
.  .13.66 
.  .13.33 
.  .12.43 
.  .11.76 
.  .11.31 
.  .  9.74 
.  .  9.26 
.  .  8.70 
.  .  8.37 
.  .  8.25 
.  .  8.23 
.  .  8.04 
.  .  8.03 
.  .  7.33 
.  .  7.09 
.  .  6.65 
.  .  6.61 
;.  6.57 
.  .  6.52 
.  .  6.16 
..  5.79 
.  .  5.71 
.  .  5.64 
..  5.28 
.  .  4.23 
.  .  4.09 
..  4.04 
.  .  4.01 
.  .  3.99 
.  .  3.68 
.  .  3.45 
.  .  3.19 
.  .  2.63 
.  .  2.59 
.  .  2.57 
.  .  2.35 
.  .  2.25 
.  .  1.96 
,  ..  1.72 
.  ..  1.48 
.  .  1.41 
. ..  1.14 
,  .  .  .85 

.  .  .  .60 
.  ..  .42 

.  ..  .33 


Per  cent 
net  Gain 

95 

91 

61 

84 

61 

59 

72 

47 

22 

189 

35 

208 

88 

216 

78 

122 

136 

148 

96 
71 
43 

104 

208 

302 

201 

96 

97 
210 

88 

62 

71 

68 

106 

111 

40 

10 

92 
176 

66 

19 

77 

74 

93 
128 

93 

233 

228 

12» 


21 


(c)  THE  SOCIALIST  PARTY. 

Membership,  Vote  and  Parliamentary  Representation  of  the 
World— 1912-1914. 


Parliament 


Country: 

Membership 

Vote 

Socialist  Total 

Argentine  .... 

4,000 

48,000 

10 

120 

Australia  . 

.  .  .  200,000 

678,012 

66 

111 

Austria  . 

...  289,524 

1,053,627 

82 

516 

Belgium  . 

.  .  .  269,830 

483,241 

40 

186 

Bulgaria  . 

_  6,000 

85,489 

20 

211 

Canada  . 

.  .  .  .  6,180 

15,857 

. . . 

Denmark  . 

.  ...  52,000 

107,412 

*36 

114 

Finland  . 

_  51,798 

310,503 

90 

206 

France  . 

_  63,358 

1,398,771 

101 

597 

Germany  . 

.  .  .  .  982,850 

4,250,399 

110 

397 

'  Great  Britain  . 

.  .  .  .  100,000 

378,839 

42 

676 

,  Greece  . 

_  1,000 

12,000 

181 

I  Hungary*  .... 

_  100,000 

.  . . 

1  Italy  . 

.  .  .  .  40,000 

997,000 

'79 

508 

Luxembourg  .  . 

*  _  . 

4,000 

7 

53 

j  Netherlands  .  . 

.  ...  20,623 

145,588 

18 

100 

!  New  Zealand.. 

.  .  .  .  52,000 

44,960 

4 

80 

Norway  . 

.  .  .  .  43,557 

124,594 

23 

123 

Portugal  . 

.  ...  3,500 

3,308 

1 

164 

Roumanla  .... 

2,057 

.  . . 

. .  . 

Russia  . 

_  168,000 

200,000 

14 

442 

Servia  . 

.  ...  3,000 

25,000 

2 

166 

South  Africa  . 

26,098t 

7 

121 

Spain . 

'40,666 

40,791 

1 

406 

1  Sweden  . 

_  70,000 

229,339 

73 

230 

Switzerland  .  . 

.  .  .  .  31,384 

105,000 

15 

189 

United  States  . 

_  118,045 

*31,406 

SSI 

Totals  . 

_ 2,716,649 

11,701,291 

841 

6,416 

In  addition  to  the  vote  and  membership  figures  as  given 
above,  there  are  also  Socialist  movements  in  Armenia,  Bolivia, 
Chili,  China,  Cuba,  Iceland,  Japan,  Newfoundland,  Persia,  Turkey 
and  Uruguay.  In  Australia,  New  Zealand  and  South  Africa 
the  figures  given  include  the  vote  of  the  Labor  parties,  as^well 
as  the  Socialist  parties.  These  Labor  parties,  are  not.  in  .  all 
respects  in  accord  with  the  International  Socialist  organization, 
but  for  practical  purposes  may  be  considered  Socialist. 

*This  party  membership  figure  is  furnished  by  A.  Loewy, 
Hungarian  translator-secretary  in  the  United  States.  Most  of 
the  Socialists  are  disfranchised  in  Hungary  on  account  of  prop¬ 
erty  qualifications. 

ffn  Transvaal  only. 

Socialists  Alone  Make  Gains. 


This  table  gives  one  of  the  reasons  “why  Socialists  smile”: 

1908. 


Bryan  (Dem.)  . 6,409,104 

Taft.  (Rep.)  . 7,678,908 

Chafin  (Pro.)  . 253,840 

Gilhaus  (Soc.  Labor)  .  13,825 

Debs  (Soc.)  . 424,488 


1912. 


Wilson  (Dem.)  . 

Taft  and  Roosevelt  (Rep.) 

Chafin  (Pro.)  . 

Reimer  (Soc.  Labor)  . 

Debs  (Soc.)  . 


6,291,878  Loss  117,226 
7,608,234  Loss  69,674 
208,762  Loss  45,078 
30,344  Gain  16,519 
,  901,062  Gain  476,574 


The  table  disproves  the  popular  impression  that  there  was  a 
Democratic  landslide.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Wilson  in  1912  re¬ 
ceived  117,226  less  votes  than  Bryan  in  1908.  In  spite  of  their 
victory  the  Democrats  have,  therefore,  lost.  Taft  this  year  re¬ 
ceived  only  3,484,806  votes.  Adding  to  this  the  4,123,428  votes 
that  Roosevelt  received,  the  combined  Republican-Progressive 
vote  still  falls  69,674  short  of  the  Republican  vote  of  1908. 
The  Prohibitionists  are  also  on  the  toboggan  slide. 


22 


On  the  other  hand,  both  the  Socialist  party  and  the  Socialist 
Labor  party  more  than  doubled  their  1908  vote. 

A  few  more  years  of  this  and  the  world  is  ours. 

The*  Socialist  Vote  and  the  Public  School. 

The  lowest  per  capita  school  assessment  is  in  the  state  of 
South  Carolina,  amounting  to  only  $1.43. 

The  smallest  proportional  Socialist  vote  is  also  in  the  state 
of  South  Carolina,  where  there  is  only  one  Socialist  voter  to 
every  9,240  people. 

Ignorance  and  illiteracy  are  the  greatest  foes  of  Socialism. 

4.  Socialism  and  Its  Critics. 

(a)  SOCIALISM  AND  THE  CATHOLIC  CHURCH. 

A  Catholic  Defense  of  Socialism. 

(A  Leaflet  issued  by  the  Socialist  Party.) 

Some  of  the  leading  Catholic  scholars  of  America  recently 
issued  a  protest  against  the  famous  “Encyclopedia  Britannica,” 
alleging  that  many  of  its  articles  misrepresent  the  Roman 
Catholic  church  and  its  religion. 

If  the  charge  is  true,  every  fair-minded  man  and  woman  will 
sympathize  with  the  protest.  It  is  a  shame  that  millions  of 
earnest  men  and  women  should  be  misrepresented. 

Perhaps  our  Catholic  friends  will  now  be  able  to  appreciate 
how  the  Socialists  feel  when  they  are  misrepresented  and 
libeled  in  Catholic  papers  and  by  priests  speaking  from  the 
altar. 

We  have  been  glad  to  notice  a  growing  sense  of  fairness  on 
the  part  of  Catholic  journals  toward  Socialism.  “The  Catholic 
World,”  for  example,  does  not  indulge  in  vulgar  abuse,  but  uses 
fair  argument. 

That  is  all  we  ask. 

Now  we  observe  that  a  good  many  Catholic  papers  are  print¬ 
ing  long  extracts  from  a  remarkable  speech  delivered  by  the 
Hon.  Charles  Russell,  son  of  Lord  Russell  of  Killowen,  at  the 
Annual  Congress  of  the  Catholic  Young  Men’s  Society  of  Great 
Britain. 

This  eminent  British  Catholic’s  fairness  affords  a  striking 
contrast  to  the  appeals  to  prejudice  and  passion  made  by  Father 
Vaughan,  to  whom,  by  the  way,  the  distinguished  speaker  paid 
his  respects. 

Mr.  Russell  believes  that  Socialism  is  not  practicable,  that 
it  would  “destroy  all  incentive  to  effort  and  invention.”  We 
believe  he  is  wrong,  and  we  ask  for  a  candid  study  of  our  reply 
to  these  hoary  objections. 

We  give  the  greater  part  of  the  speech,  and  trust  that  it 
will  help  to  dispel  the  prejudice  of  many  an  honest  Catholic. 

Speech  by  Hon.  Charles  Russell: 

“The  first  thing  we  have  to  consider  is  the  question,  what  is 
the  origin  of  the  present  Socialistic  movement?  It  is  to  be 
found  in  the  present  deplorable  and  appalling  state  of  society. 
We  have,  on  the  one  hand,  prodigious  growth  of  wealth  in  a 
few  hands,  nearly  three-fourths  of  the  land  of  England  is  held 
by  ten  thousand  people,  while  twelve  thousand  men  own  two- 
thirds  of  our  industries.  Accompanying  this  we  have  among 
the  rich  an  unparalleled  growth  of  luxury  and  extravagance; 
on  the  other  hand,  we  have  growth  of  poverty  and  destitution, 
a  want  of  work,  an  increase  in  sweating  and  misery  among  the 
poor. 

“The  race  is  deteriorating,  and  we  have  to  admit  that,  out  of 
a  population  of  45,000,000,  12,000,000  are  on  the  verge  of  starva¬ 
tion.  We  have  the  greater  part  of  the  owners  of  great  wealth 
doing  nothing  to  remedy  the  evil  conditions  of  the  poor.  As 


Cardinal  Gibbons  has  said,  ‘No  friend  of  his  race  can  contem- 
>late  without  painful  emotions  the  heartless  monopolists  and 
p-asping  avarice  which  has  dried  up  every  sentiment  of  sym¬ 
pathy,  and  sordid  selfishness  which  is  deaf  to  cries  of  distress. 
Their  whole  aim  is  to  realize  large  dividends  without  regard  to 
he  claims  of  justice  and  charity.  These  trusts  and  monopolies, 
ike  the  Car  of  Juggernaut,  crush  every  obstacle  that  stands  in 
heir  way,  they  compel  their  operatives  to  work  for  starvation 
vages,  especially  in  mining  districts  and  factories,  where  pro- 
ests  are  but  a  feeble  effort  and  are  easily  stifled  by  intimida- 
ion.’ 

“That  is  the  state  of  affairs  which  has  brought  about  the 
apid  growth  of  Socialistic  views,  and  is  it  to  be  wondered  at 
hat  thoughtful  men  should  seek  a  new  remedy  and'  should  have 
:ome  to  the  conclusion  that  the  present  conditions  of  affairs 
nust  be  ended  and  cannot  be  mended.  Of  course,  if  all  the 
vorld  were  to  live  up  to  the  teachings  of  the  Master,  things 
vould  not  be  as  they  exist,  but  the  human  race  being  what  it  is, 
i  remedy  remains  to  be  found.  I  do  not  for  a  moment  suggest 
Socialism  as  the  remedy,  but  this  is  true,  I  think,  that  except 
ipon  lines  of  Socialism  there  is  at  the  present  moment  no  other 
•emedy  proposed.  THE  BURDEN  IS  UPON  ANYBODY 
WHO  DENOUNCES  SOCIALISM  TO  SUGGEST  AN 
ALTERNATIVE,  BUT  UP  TO  THE  PRESENT  MOMENT 
SOCIALISM  ALONE  HOLDS  THE  FIELD. 

“Now,  Socialism  is  denounced  by  many  of  our  Catholic 
priests  and  Catholic  laymen  as  something  abominable  which  no 
Catholic  can  support  or  tolerate,  and  Socialists  are  declared 
:o  be  fools  or  knaves;  and  that  is  the  attitude  which  I  wish  you 
:o  examine  today.  Again,  I  repeat  I  am  not  a  Socialist,  but  1 
want  to  ask  you  whether  this  attituude  toward  Socialism  is 
either  just  or  wise? 

“Its  definition  is  well  known  and  admitted.  It  is  the  munici¬ 
palization  of  the  sources  of  production  of  wealth,  or,  in  other 
words,  it  is  a  system-  under  which  the  State  is  to  own  all  the 
productive  businesses  and  manufactories  in  a  country  instead  of 
their  being  owned,  as  at  present,  by  a  fortunate  and  favored 
section  of  the  community. 

“Now,  in  the  first  place,  a  moment’s  reflection  will  at  once 
reveal  this:  That  Socialism  is  not  a  thing  which  can  be  brought 
about  by  either  violence  or  revolution.  Being  a  state  of  affairs 
which  means  a  complete  change  in  the  habits  and  thoughts  of 
mankind,  it  can  only  be  achieved  by  a  slow,  gradual  change. 
It  must  be  accomplished  by  evolution,  not  revolution. 

“In  the  next  place,  may  I  point  out  that  at  first  sight,  and 
indeed  I  may  say  at  second  sight,  THERE  IS  NOTHING  ON 
THE  FACE  OF  THAT  PROPOSITION  WHICH  IS 
CONTRARY  TO  CHRISTIANITY  OR  CATHOLICISM. 
Indeed,  in  this  and  other  Christian  countries,  we  have  gone  a 
good  way  along  the  road  which  leads  to  the  ultimate  realization 
of  that  condition.  The  state  in  different  instances  owns  tele¬ 
phones,  water  supply,  tramways,  gas  supply,  telegraphs,  the 
postal  service,  the  railway  service  and  the  tobacco,  and  I 
confess  I  have  not  noticed  any  material  change  for  the  better 
or  worse  taking  place  in  the  religion  or  morals  of  the  tramway 
officials  or  passengers,  or  of  the  telephone  operators,  since 
those  systems  have  been  transferred  to  the  State. 

“In  what,  then,  can  it  be  said  that  Socialism  is  un-Christian 
and  un-Catholic?  One  way  in  which  this  is  endeavored  to  be 
established  is  the  assertion  that  it  means  the  expropriation 
without  compensation  by  the  State  of  private  properties  of 
individuals,  but  this  is  not  necessarily  s®,  and  the  leading 
Socialist  parties  in  this  country  do  not  advocate  for  a  moment 
any  such  proceeding.  They  are,  in  fact,  strongly  opposed 


24  I 

to  it.  We  have  already  arrived  vat  the  municipalization  of  ini 


dustries,  representing  tens  of  thousands  of  millions  of  mone* 
without  adopting  such  a  course. 

“But  even  supposing  that  Socialism  did  mean  the  expropria 
tion  without  compensation  (which  it  does  not),  I  am  tempted 
to  ask,  is  it  therefore  either  anti-Christian  or  anti-Catholic?  I 
is  admitted  that  the  State  has  -a  right  to  tax  property  of  th 
subject,  BUT  DOES  NOT  A  RIGHT  TO  TAX  INVOLVI 
NECESSARILY  A  RIGHT  TO  TAKE  IF  IT  SHOULD  BJ 
FOR  THE  PUBLIC  GOOD  THAT  THE  PROPERTY 
SHOULD  BE  TAKEN?  I 

“It  is  perfectly  moral  and  right  to  take  a  twentieth  part  of  J 
man’s  property,  as  is  done  by  income  tax  at  present,  or  a  tentri 
part,  as  is;  done  often  by  death  duties,  or  a  fourth  part,  as  ii 
done  by  increment  tax.  But  if  it  be  admitted  that  it  is  right  am 
proper  to  take  a  twentieth,  a  tenth,  a  fourth  for  the  good  of  th < 
State,  why  is  it  un-Christian  and  immoral,  if  the  State  needs  it 
to  take  the  whole?  Where  does  virtue  cease  and  vice  begin? 
submit  that  it  must  logically  follow  that  the  right  to  tax  mus 
necessarily  involve  the  right  to  take.  Test  the  matter  in  an 
other  way.  Does  anybody  deny  the  right  of  a  State  to  insis 
upon  its  subjects  becoming  soldiers  and  giving  up  their  live, 
for  the  good  of  the  State?  If  the  State  can  take  a  man’s  lib 
when  it  is  for  the  good  of  the  nation  to  do  so,  surely  it  has  also 
the  right  to  take  his  property  for  the  same  object. 

“Again,  I  wish  to  repeat  I  am  not  a  Socialist.  I  STRONG 
LY  OBJECT  AND  PROTEST  AGAINST  SOCIALISM 
BEING  FOUGHT  UPON  WRONG  LINES  AND  TO  MY 
MIND,  IT  IS  FIGHTING  IT  ON  WRONG  LINES  TO  DE¬ 
NOUNCE  IT  ON  THE  GROUND  OF  RELIGION  ANE 
MORALITY.  It  is  not  only  unfair  fighting,  but,  like  the  res: 
of  unfair  fighting,  it  is  a  very  foolish  procedure,  because  if  ali 
the  forces  of  religion  are  turned  against  Socialism,  it  will  inevi¬ 
tably  follow  in  course  of  time  that  all  the  forces  of  Socialism 
will  necessarily  be  turned  against  religion,  whereas  if  Socialism 
is  met,  as  it  ought  to  be  met,  and  fought  on  the  battleground 
of  economical  principles,  we  will  then  be  meeting  it  and 
fighting  it  on  a  fair  field  with  no  favor.  Of  course,  I  am  quite 
aware  of  the  argument  which  will  be  mentioned  against  me: 
That  I  should  have  referred  to  the  writings  and  speeches  of 
individual  Socialists  who  denounce  religion  and  discourse  upon 
a  grotesque  morality  of  their  own.  Those  are  the  views  of 
individual  Socialists,  whose  views  are  to  be  deplored  and  de¬ 
nounced,  but  they  are  the  views  of  individual  Socialists.  It  is 
a  mere  confusion  of. the  very  serious  and  grave  issues  at  stake 
to  rely  upon  them  in  a  discussion  like  this.  It  would  be  as 
logical  to  denounce  tlie  medical  profession  because  many  of 
them  abuse  their  knowledge,  or  artists  or  poets,  because  so 
many  stoop  to  use  their  talents  to  pander  to  vice.  It  would  be 
as  reasonable  to  denounce  Liberalism,  the  Liberal  party,  be 
cause  John  Morley  is  an  avowed  agnostic,  or  Toryism  be 
cause  Mr.  Balfour  to  a  large  extent  shares  the  same  views 
The  enemies  of  religion  and  the  enemies  of  morality  are  tc 
be  found  in  all  ranks  and  in  all  parties.  IT  IS  A  CURIOUS 
THING  TODAY  THAT  THE  MOST  VIOLENT  ANTI- 
CHURCH  POLITICIAN  IN  FRANCE  IS  ALSO  ONE  OF 
THE  MOST  VIOLENT  ANTI-SOCIALISTIC  LEADERS 
I  REFER  TO  M.  CLEMENCEAU. 

“Now,  as  I  have  said,  let  us  meet  Socialism  and  fight  it 
with  the  proper  weapons.  Let  us  point  out  the  evils  of  Social¬ 
ism,  the  impracticability  of  Socialism;  that  it  must  necessarily 
destroy  all  incentive  to  effort  and  invention. 

“These  and  kindred  arguments,  which  it  is  not  our  business 
to  go  into  tonight,  are  those  which  are  to  be  employed  to  battle 


26 


/ 

Socialism,  but  I  PROTEST  MOST  STRONGLY  AGAINST 
THE  FULMINATION  OF  RELIGIOUS  THUNDER¬ 
BOLTS,  EVEN  WHEN  THEY  ARE  DELIVERED  BY 
OUR  GENIAL  FRIEND,  FATHER  BERNARD  VAUGHAN, 
FROM  A  SELECT  PLATFORM  IN  THE  QUEEN'S  HALL, 
A  DUKE  IN  THE  CHAIR,  AND  ROTHSCHILD’S  BAND 
DISCOURSING  SWEET  MUSIC. 

i  “Persuasion  sometimes  makes  converts  —  denunciations 
never.  NOTHING  YOU  CAN  SAY  OR  DO  WILL  PRE¬ 
VENT  THE  MASS  OF  THE  NATION  LISTENING  TO 
THE  TEACHINGS  OF  SOCIALISM.  The  people  know  and 
feel  the  mortal  disease  from  which  they  are  suffering,  and  they 
4  will  listen  to  all  serious  people  who  propose  a  remedy.  They 
[  will  listen,  too,  to  you  if  you  are  prepared  to  show  the  false¬ 
ness  of  the  remedy;  but  mere  wholesale  abuse  and  denuncia¬ 
tions  will  merely  make  them  turn  away  in  disgust  and  drive 
them  in  the  very  direction  from  which  you  wish  to  divert 
•j  them.” 

Catholic  Priest  Denies  That  Socialists  Stand  for  “Free  Love.” 

In  an  address  delivered  under  the  auspices  of  the  Knights  of 
Columbus,  at  the  Nevada  Theater  on  Tuesday,  April  1,  1913,  on 
“Socialism  and  the  State,”  the  Rev.  Peter  C.  Yorke,  D.  D.,  of 
Oakland,  California,  said  as  follows: 

“Now,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  am  not  going  to  talk,  and  I 
am  sure  you  don’t  want  me  to  talk  about  free  love  and  any  of 
Wthis  truck  that  you  hear  people  bringing  up  about  and  against 
JSocialism.  ...  I  can’t  imagine  that  there  could  be  any  more 
I  opportunities  for  free  love  or  things  of  that  kind  in  a  Socialistic 
[state  than  you  have  today.  If  people  want  community  free  love, 
fit  isn’t  because  they  haven’t  plenty  of  opportunities.” 

Catholic  Church  Fathers  Believed  in  Community  of  Goods  and 
Denounced  Riches. 

The  Socialists  contend  for  the  collective  ownership  of  the 
principal  means  of  production  and  distribution.  It  will  be  seen 
from  the  quotations  that  follow  that  the  church-fathers  went 
much  further  and  advocated  the  common  ownership  of  all 
.property. 

j(From  “The  Alleged  Socialism  of  the  Church  Fathers,”  by  Rev. 

John  A.  Ryan,  D.  D.  Published  by  B.  Herder.) 

St.  John  Chrysostom  (347-407):  It  is  a  vice  of  the  rich  when 
they  retain  among  themselves  those  things  which  they  possess; 
for  this  injures  them  and  others.  .  .  .  Neither  is  any  one 

able  to  become  rich  without  injustice.  .  .  .  When  each  one 

endeavors  to  usurp  a  certain  portion,  in  order  to  make  it  his 
own,  a  quarrel  arises,  as  if  nature  were  moved  to  indignation 
when  we,  whom  God  has  gathered  together,  endeavor  to  divide 
and  separate  ourselves,  to  acquire  those  common  goods  as  our 
own,  and  to  utter  those  chilling  words,  “mine”  and  “thine.” 
Then  comes  contention;  then  quarrels.  Where  there  is  none 
of  this,  contention  and  strife  do  not  arise.  For  this  reason, 
community  of  goods  rather  than  chance-determined  private 
property  was  bestowed  upon  us,  and  is  according  to  nature. 

St.  Basil  (329-379) :  To  whom,  he  says,  do  I  injury  when 
I  retain  and  conserve  my  own?  Which  things,  tell  me,  are 
yours?  Whence  have  you  brought  your  goods  into  life?  You 
are  like  one  occupying  a  place  in  a  theater,  who  should  pro¬ 
hibit  others  from  entering,  treating  that  as  his  own  which  was 
designed  for  the  common  use  of  all.  Such  are  the  rich. 
Because  they  pre-occupy  common  goods,  they  take  these  goods 
as  their  own. 

Clement  of  Alexandria  (150-215):  I  know  that  God  has 
given  us  the  use  of  goods,  but  only  as  far  as  is  necessary;  and 


26 


He  has  determined  that  the  use  be  common.  It  is  absurd  and 
disgraceful  for  one  to  live  magnificently  and  luxuriously  when 
so  many  are  hungry. 

St*  Ambrose  (340-297)v:  This  is  not,  indeed,  according  to 
nature;  for  nature  gives  all  things  in  common  to  all.  So  God 
commanded  all  things  to  be  created  in  such  a  way  that  food 
should  be  common  to  all,  and  the  earth  the  common  possession 
of  all.  Nature,  therefore,  created  the  common  right;  usurpa¬ 
tion  made  the  private  right.  .  .  .  You  do  not  give  to 

the  poor  man  of  your  own,  but  of  his.  That  which  was  given 
for  the  common  use  of  all,  you  have  usurped  for  yourself.  The 
earth  belongs  to  all,  not  to  the  rich;  but  those  who  enjoy  their 
shares  are  fewer  than  those  who  do  not.  Therefore,  you  are 
paying  a  debt,  not  bestowing  a  gift.  .  .  .  Since,  therefore, 

he  is  your  equal,  it  is  unjust  that  he  is  not  assisted  by  his 
fellow  man,  especially  since  the  Lord  our  God  has  willed  this 
earth  to  be  the  common  possession  of  all  men,  and  its  fruits  to 
support  all. 

St.  Jerome  (340-420):  All  riches  come  from  iniquity,  and 
unless  one  has  lost,  another  cannot  gain. 

Catholic  Writer  Defends  Economic  Interpretation  of  History.  I 

(From  “Socialism,  Promise  or  Menace,”  by  Hillquit  and  Ryan.  I 
The  Macmillan  Co.,  page  230.) 

One  of  the  best  works  in  English  in  defense  of  the  economic 
interpretation  of  history  comes  from  the  pen  of  a  prominent 
and  orthodox  Catholic  priest.  This  scholarly  book  is  entitled 
“History  of  Economics,  or  Economics  as  a  Factor  in  the 
Making  of  History,”  and  its  author  is  the  Rev.  J.  A.  Dewe, 
late  professor  of  the  Catholic  College  of  St.  Thomas  in  St.  Paul. 

It  is  published  by  Benziger  Brothers,  “printers  to  the  Holy  , 
Apostolic  See,”  and  its  fly-leaf  bears  the  indispensable  “Nihil  , 
Obstat”  of  the  Catholic  book  censor  as  well  as  the  official  Im-  . 
primatur  of  Archbishop,  now  Cardinal,  John  M.  Farley. 

The  summary  of  the  author’s  economic  and  historical  views,  | 
contained  in  his  introduction,  reads  like  a  page  from  Frederick 
Engels.  “It  is  evident,”  says  the  Reverend  Dewe,  “that  eco-;  L 
nomics  must  have  an  almost  unbounded  influence  on  human 
conduct,  both  public  and  private.  For  the  great  majority  spend 
the  greater  part  of  their  time  either  in  producing  or  distribut-  , 
ing  wealth,  and,  from  the  point  of  View  of  extension,  the  time  < 
that  an  ordinary  man  has  to  employ  in  earning  his  daily  bread  J 
is  greater  than  that  which  he  can  possibly  expend  in  explicit 
acts  of  religion.  This  all-pervading  activity  of  economics  is 
still  more  apparent  in  the  state  or  commonwealth.  In  the 
whole  course  of  ancient  and  modern  history  there  is  scarcely  j 
any  single  important  political  event  that  has  not  been  caused,  j, 
either  directly  or  indirectly,  by  some  economic  influence. 

“Religion  and  physical  causes  may  also  have  been  present,  L 
but  the  economic  factor  seems  to  have  been  the  most  constant  [r 
and  the  most  pervasive.” 

Dr.  Ryan  Admits  the  Soundness  of  the  Economic  Interpretation  1 

of  History.  r 

(Idem,  page  105.)  |r 

To-day  almost  all  our  political  problems  and  activities  are 
entirely  or  fundamentally  economic.  Even  the  ethical  notions 
of  men  vary  considerably  according  to  their  industrial  interests.  \ 
Consider,  for  example,  the  different  moral  judgments  passed 
respectively  by  employers  and  employes  upon  the  strike,  the  I, 
boycott,  the  closed  shop,  judicial  injunctions,  and  the  definition  I 
of  fair  wages  and  fair  profits. 


27 


Does  the  Catholic  Church  Stand  For  Community  of  Wives 
Because  the  Monk  Campanula  Did? 

From  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  (ninth  edition),  vol.  4, 
pp.  571  ff.,  the  following  statements: 

Tomaso  Campanella  (1568-1639),  “in  his  fifteenth  year  he 
entered  the  order  of  the  Dominicans. 

“He  was  placed  first  in  the  convent  at  Morgentia  in 
Abruzzo,  and  after  completing  his  course  of  philosophy  was 
transferred  to  Cosenza,  there  to  study  theology. 

“Campanella  was  strictly  orthodox,  held  the  established 
faith,  and  was  an  uncompromising  advocate  of  the  Pope’s 
temporal  power. 

“In  practical  philosophy  Campanella  was  an  extreme  re¬ 
former.  In  his  Civitas  Solis  he  sketches  an  ideal  state,  in 
which  principles  of  communism  are  fully  carried  out.  He 
contends  for  a  community  of  goods  and  wives,  for  state  con¬ 
trol  of  population,  and  for  a  universal  military  training.” 

Vol.  XVIII,  p.  245. 

“In  the  history  of  Paraguay  down  to  the  latter  part  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  interest  develops  along  two  main  lines, 
the  struggle  between  Spaniard  and  Portuguese  for  the  posses¬ 
sion  of  the  border  region,  and  the  formation  and  defense  of  a 
great  philanthropic  despotism  by  the  Jesuits.  The  first  Chris¬ 
tian  missions  in  Paraguay  were  established  by  the  Francis¬ 
cans  .  .  .  but  neither  they  nor  the  first  Jesuit  missionaries 

.  .  .  were  allowed  to  make  their  .  enterprise  a  permanent 

success.  This  fell  to  the  lot  of  the  second  band,  of  Jesuits, 
Cataldino,  Mazeta  and  Lorenzana,  who  began  work  in  1605.” 

“Socialism  before  the  French  Revolution,”  by  William  B. 
Guthrie,  Macmillan  Co.,  1907,  page  166,  says: 

“Probably  no  body  of  men  ever  so  completely  controlled  the 
economic  aspects  of  Society  as  did  the  Jesuits.  The  general 
propositions  laid  down  touching  the  efforts  of  the  Jesuits  society 
at  complete  social  control,  find  their  best  expression  in  the 
:heories  contained  in  the  ‘City  of  the  Sun,’  of  Thomas 
Sampanella.” 

Page  170.  “In  the  system  devised  by  Campanella  there 
was  community  of  wives.  He  abandoned  the  monogamous 
amily.  The  dwellers  in  his  ideal  city  have  all  things  in  com¬ 
mon,  even  the  women.  This  custom  they  defend  from  the 
writing  of  the  Apostolic  Fathers,  the  writings  of  Clement, 
Socrates,  Cato  and  Plato.  In  brief  but  unmistakable  terms 
he  celibate  monk  advises  the  Platonic  theory  of  community  of 
wives;  it  is  defended  as  scriptural,  historical  and  expeditious. 

“That  Campanella’s  teaching  had  its  influence  on  the  Jes- 
iits’  system  seems  also  true.  The  two  men  most  influential  in 
esuit  society  were  Italians,  Cataldino  and  Maceta.  They  were, 
n  all  likelihood,  known  to  Campanella;  there  was  also  in  all 
>robability,  a  common  knowledge  of  the  principles  they  so 
igorously  applied.  On  this  Kirchenheim  says:  ‘Such,  was  the 
Christian  social  state  of  the  Jesuits 'in  Paraguay,  of  which 
Campanella  in  the  prison  had  written.  It  is  evident  that  this 
tate  agreed  not  merely  in  general  principles  but  in  its  details 
vith  the  scheme  of  Campanella.’  ‘The  philosophic  writers  and 
hese  practical  reformers  attempted  to  build  a  state  after  a 
•iven  mechanical  form.’  ” 

(b)  SOCIALISM  VS.  SYNDICALISM. 

Syndicalism  Defined. 

Syndicalism  is  represented  in  the  United  States  by  the 
industrial  Workers  of  the  World  and  the  Syndicalist  Union 

>f  America. 


28 


John  Spargo  in  “Syndicalism,  Industrial  Unionism  and  So¬ 
cialism”  defines  Syndicalism  as  follows: 

The  word  “Syndicalism”  is,  in  popular  usage,  the  French 
equivalent  of  the  English  term  “trade  unionism.”  In  English, 
the  word  “syndicate”  is  used  to  describe  a  combination  of  cap¬ 
italists  to  promote  some  particular  enterprise  or  speculation. 
In  France  the  word  is  more  widely  applied  and  denotes  any 
association  of  persons  formed  to  promote  special  interests  held 
by  those  comprised  in  the  association.  Thus  our  English  term 
“trade  unionism”  is  translated  into  French  as  “Syndicates  ouv- 
riers,”  that  is,  syndicates  or  associations  of  workers.  Etymo¬ 
logically,  therefore,  the  French  word  “Syndicalisme”  connotes 
the  system  or  policy  of  any  kind  of  “syndicate.”  But  in  pop¬ 
ular  use  it  is  applied  almost  exclusively  to  labor  unionism.  We 
may  say  then  that  Syndicalism  is  only  the  French  name  for 
labor  unionism. 

Syndicalism  is  a  form  of  labor  unionism  which  aims  at  the 
abolition  of  the  capitalist  system  based  upon  the  exploitation 
of  the  workers,  and  its  replacement  by  a  new  social  order  free 
from  class  denomination  and  exploitation.  Its  distinctive  prin¬ 
ciple  as  a  practical  movement  is  that  these  ends  are  to  be 
attained  by  the  direct  action  of  the  unions,  without  parliament¬ 
ary  action  or  the  intervention  of  the  State.  The  distinctive 
feature  of  its  ideal  is  that  in  the  new  social  order  the  political 
State  will  not  exist,  the  only  form  of  government  being  the 
administration  of  industry  directly  by  the  workers  themselves. 

A  Socialist  Criticism  of  Syndicalism. 

{From  Violence  and  the  Labor  Movement,  by  Robert  Hunter. 

Published  by  Macmillan  Company.  Page  259.) 

The  syndicalists  propose  to  force  society  to  put  the  means 
of  production  into  the  hands  of  the  trade  unions.  It  is  per¬ 
haps  worth  pointing  out  that  Owen-,  Proudhon,  Blanc,  Lassalle, 
and  Bakounin  all  advocated  what  may  be  called  “group  social¬ 
ism.”  This  conception  of  future  society  contemplates  the 
ownership  of  the  mines  by  miners,  of  the  railroads  by  the 
railway  workers,  of  the  land  by  the  peasants.  All  the  workers 
in  the  various  industries  are  to  be  organized  into  unions  and 
then  brought  together  in  a  federation.  Several  objections  are 
made  to  this  outline  of  a  new  society.  In  the  first  place,  it  is 
artificial.  Except  for  an  occasional  co-operative  undertaking, 
there  is  not,  nor  has  there  ever  been,  any  tendency  toward 
trade-union  ownership  of  industry.  In  addition,  it  is  an  idea 
that  is  today  an  anachronism.  It  is  conceivable  that  small 
federated  groups  might  control  and  conduct  countless  little 
industries,  but  it  is  not  conceivable  that  groups  of  “self-govern¬ 
ing,”  “autonomous,”  and  “independent”  workmen  could,  or 
would,  be  allowed  by  a  highly  industrialized  society  to  direct 
and  manage  such  vast  enterprises  as  the  trusts  have  built  up. 
If  each  group  is  to  run  industry  as  it  pleases,  the  Standard  Oil 
workers  or  the  steel,  workers  might  menace  society  in  the  ! 
future  as  the  owners  of  those  monopolies  menace  it  in  the 
present. 

The  Non-Political  Attitude  of  the  Syndicalists. 

{From  “Violence  and  the  Labor  Movement,”  by  Robert 
Hunter.  Published  by  Macmillan  Company.  Page  261-263.) 

Although  this  “group  socialism” — or  syndicalism — would 
certainly  necessitate  a  parliament  in  order  to  harmonize  the 
conflicting  interests  of  the  various  productive  associations,  | 
there  is  nothing,  it  appears,  that  the  syndicalist  so  much  abhors. 
He  is  never  quite  done  with  picturing  the  burlesque  of  parlia¬ 
mentarism.  While,  no  doubt,  this  is  a  necessary  corollary  to  his 
antagonism  to  the  State,  it  is  aggravated  by  the  fact  that  on?  j 


?nftnhpChref  en(!S  °'a  poIitic^  Party  is  ^  Put  its  representatives 
into  Parliament.  The  syndicalist,  in  ridiculing  all  parliament- 
ary  activity,  is  at  the  same  time,  therefore,  endeavoring  to 
prove  the  folly  of  political  action. 


The  powerlessness  of  parliaments  may  be  easily  exagger¬ 
ated.  To  say  that  they  are  incapable  of  constructive  work  is 
to  deny  innumerable  facts  of  history.  Laws  have  both  set  up 
and  destroyed  industries.  The  action  of  parliaments  has  estab¬ 
lished  gigantic  industries.  The  schools,  the  roads,  the  Panama 
Canal,  and  a  thousand  other  great  operations  known  to  us 
today  have  been  set  going  by  parliaments.  Tariff  laws  make 
and  destroy  industries.  Prohibition  laws  have  annihilated  in¬ 
dustries,  while  legality,  which  is  the  peculiar  product  of  parlia- 
;  ments,  has  everything  to  do  with  the  ownership  of  property, 

|  of  industry,  and  of  the  management  of  capital.  For  one  who  is 
attacking  a  legal  status,  who  is  endeavoring  to  alter  political, 
juridical,  as  well  as  industrial  and  social  relations,  the  con- 
i  quering  of  parliaments  is  vitally  necessary. 


Syndicalists  Believe  in  Minority  Rule. 

!  (From  “Violence  and  the  Labor  Movement,”  by  Robert  Hunter. 

Published  by  Macmillan  Company.  Pages  264-265.) 

|  The  consistent  opposition  of  the  syndicalists  to  the  State 
|  is  leading  them  desperately  far,  and  we  see  them  developing, 
as  the  anarchists  did  before  them,  a  contempt  even  for  democ¬ 
racy.  The  literature  of  syndicalism  teems  with  attacks  on 
|  democracy.  “Syndicalism  and  Democracy,”  says  Emile  Pouget, 

! '  “are  the  two  opposite  poles  which  exclude  and  neutralize  each 
other.  Democracy  is  a  social  superfluity,  a  parasitic  and 
external  excrescence,  while  syndicalism  is  the  logical  mani- 
j  festation  of  a  growth  of  life,  it  is  a  rational  cohesion  of  human 
|  beings,,  and  that  is  why,  instead  of  restraining  their  individ- 
|  uality,  it  prolongs  and  develops  it.”  Democracy  is,  in  the  view 
|  of  Sorf^  the  regime  par  excellence,  in  which  men  are  gov- 
i  erned  by  the  magical  power  of  high  sounding  words  rather 
j  than  by  ideas;  by  formulas  rather  than  by  reasons;  by  dogmas, 
j  the  origin  of  which  nobody  cares  to  find  out,  rather  than  by 
doctrines  based  on  observation.”  Lagardelle  declares  that  syndi- 
j  calism.  is  post-democratic.  “Democracy  corresponds  to  a  def- 
!  ^ite  historical  movement,”  he  says,  “which  has  come  to  an  end. 
Syndicalism  is  an  anti-democratic  movement.”  These  are  but 
three  out  of  a  number  of  criticisms  of  democracy  that  might 
j  be  quoted.  Although  natural  enough  as  a  consequence  of 
syndicalist  antagonism  to  the  State,  these  ideas  are  neverthe¬ 
less  fatal  when  applied  to  the  actual  conduct  of  a  working  class 
|  movement.  It  .means  that  the  minority  belieVes  that  it  can 
j  drive  the  majority.  We  remember  that  Guerard  suggested,  in 
j  his  advocacy  of  the  general  strike,  that,  if  the  railroad  workers 
struck,  many  other  trades  “would  be  compelled  to  quit  work.” 
i  “A  daring  revolutionary  minority  conscious  of  its  aim  can 
1  carry  away  with  the  majority.”  Pouget  confesses:  “The 
|  syndicalist  has  a  contempt  for  the  vulgar  idea  of  democracy— 

,  the  inert,  unconscious  mass  is  not  to  be  taken  into  account 
j  when  the  minority  wishes  to  act  so  as  to  benefit  it  .  ” 

j  He  refers  in  another  place  to  the  majority,  who  may  be  con- 
|  sidered  as  human  zeros.  “Thus  appears  the  enormous  dif- 
j  ference  in  method,”  concludes  Pouget,  “which  distinguishes 
syndicalism  and  democracy;  the  latter,  by  the  mechanism  of 
universal  suffrage,  gives  direction  to  the  unconscious 
and  stifles  the  minorities  who  bear  within  them  the  hopes  of* 
j  the  future.” 

This  is  anarchism  all  over  again,  from  Proudhon  to  Gold¬ 
man.  But,  while  the  Bakounists  were  forced,  as  a  result  of 
these  views,  to  abandon  organized  effort,  the  newest  anarchists 


30 


have  attempted  to  incorporate  these  ideas  into  the  very  con¬ 
stitution  of  the  French  Confederation  of  Labor.  And  at  present 
they  are,  in  fact,  a  little  clique  that  rides  on  the  backs  of  the 
organized  workers,  and  the  majority  cannot  throw  them  off 
so  long  as  a  score  of  members  have  the  same  voting  power  in 
the  Confederation  as  that  of  a  trade  union  with  ten  thousand 
members. 

The  General  Strike. 

(From  “Violence  and  the  Labor  Movement,”  by  Robert  Hunter. 

Published  by  Macmillan  Company.  Pages  274-275.) 

It  is  urged  that  labor  alone  is  absolutely  necessary  to  pro¬ 
duction  and  that  if,  in  a  great  general  strike,  it  should  cease 
production,  the  whole  of  society  would  be  forced  to  capitulate. 
And  in  theory  this  seems  unassailable,  but  actually  it  has  no 
force  whatever.  In  the  first  place,  this  economic  power  does 
not  exist  unless  the  workers  are  organized  and  are  practically 
unanimous  in  their  action.  Furthermore,  the  economic  position 
of  the  workers  is  one  of  utter  helplessness  at  the  time  of  a 
universal  strike,  in  that  they  cannot  feed  themselves.  As  they 
are  nearest  of  all  classes  to  starvation,  they  will  be  the  first 
to  suffer  by  a  stoppage  of  work.  There  is  still  another  vital 
weakness  in  this  so-called  economic  theory.  The  battles  that 
result  from  a  general  strike  will  not  be  on  the  industrial  field. 
They  will  be  battles  between  the  armed  agents  of  the  State 
and  unarmed  masses  of  hungry  men.  Whatever  economic 
power  the  workers  are  said  to  possess  would,  in  that  case,  avail 
them  little,  for  the  results  of  their  struggles  would  depend  ( 
upon  the  military  power  which  they  would  be  able  to  manifest.  1 
The  individual  worker  has  no  economic  power,  nor  has  the  ! 
minority,  and  it  may  even  be  questioned  if  the  withdrawal  of  \ 
all  the  organized  workers  could  bring  society  to  its  knees,  i 
Multitudes  of  the  small  propertied-  classes  of  farmers,  of  police, 
of  militiamen,  and  of  others  would  immediately  rush  to  the 
defense  of  society  in  the  time  of  such  peril.  It  is  only  the 
working  class  theoretically  conceived  of  as  a  conscious  unit 
and  as  practically  unanimous  in  its  revolutionary  aims,  in  its 
methods,  and  in  its  revolt,  which  can  be  considered  as  the 
ultimate  economic  power  of  modern  society.  The  day  of  such 
a  conscious  and  enlightened  solidarity  is,  however,  so  far  dis-  \ 
tant  that  the  syndicalism  which  is  based  upon  it  falls  of  itself 
into  a  fantastic  dream. 

The  Socialist  Party  Opposes  “Sabotage.” 

(From  the  National  Constitution  of  the  Socialist  Party.  Article 
%  II.  Sec.  6.) 

Any  member  of  the  party  who  opposes  political  action  or 
advocates  crime,  sabotage,  or  other  methods  of  violence  as  a 
weapon  of  the  working  class  to  aid  in  its  emancipation  shall 
be  expelled  from  membership  in  the  party.  Political  action 
shall  be  construed  to  mean  participation  in  elections  for  public 
office  and  practical  legislative  and  administrative  work  along  ' 
the  lines  of.  the  Socialist  Party  platform. 

Origin  of  the  Word  “Sabotage.” 

(From  Syndicalism,  Industrial  Unionism  and  Socialism.  By 

John  Spargo.  Published  by  B.  W.  Huebsch.  Page  147.) 

The  word  “sabotage”  was  first  used,  I  believe,  in  1897  in 
a  report  of  the  Congress  of  the  Confederation  Generale  du  Tra¬ 
vail,  which  met  that  year  at  Toulouse.  Among  the  reports 
considered  by  the  congress  was  one  dealing  with  the  use 
of  the  boycott  and  the  policy  which  had  been  adopted  by  the 
British  unions  of  workers  engaged  in  the  trades  connected 


/ 


31 


, 

with  the  ocean  transport  services,  popularly  known  as  Ca 
Canny.  This  report  was  written  by  Emile  Pouget  and  Paul 
Delassale,  both  well  known  anarchists.  They  wanted  to  find 
a  French  equivalent  for  the  Scotch  colloquialism,  Ca  ’Canny, 
as  the  purpose  of  their  report  to  the  congress  was  to  elaborate 
the  British  policy  known  by  that  name  and  recommend  it  to 
the  French  unions.  They  “coined”  the  word  sabotage.  Never 
before  had  it  been  used. 

In  France,  especially  in  the  rural  districts,  it  has  long  been 
the  custom  to  liken  the  slow  and  clumsy  worker  to  one  wear¬ 
ing  wooden  shoes,  called  “sabots.”  The  phrase,  Travailler  a 
coups  de  sabots,  fo  work  as  one  wearing  wooden  shoes,  has 
|  long  been  used  with  reference  to  the  slow  and  clumsy  worker, 

|  the  “old  soldier,”  as  they  say  in  England.  It  is  so  used,  I  think, 
by  Balzac.  The  idea  is  obvious-;  the  peasant  with  heavy  wooden 
I  shoes  walks  clumsily  and  slowly  in  comparison  with  those  who 
wear  shoes  of  leather.  So  the  word  “sabotage”— literally  “wood¬ 
en  shoeage”— was  coined  by  Pouget  and  by  him  and  Delassale 
used  in  their  report  to  the  Toulouse  Congress  of  the  Confed¬ 
eration  Generale  du  Travail  as  a  good  translation  of  the  British 
term  Ca  ’Canny. 


M 


[ 


j 


! 


i 


Why  the  Socialist  Party  Opposes  Sabotage. 


Are  There  Classes  in  America?”  by  Ralph  Korngold.) 

This  pamphlet  can  be  obtained  from  the  national  office  of 
the  Socialist  Party  for  10  cents. 

John  Spargo,  in  his  excellent  book  “Syndicalism,  Industrial 
Unionism  and  Socialism,”  defines  sabotage  as  “an  essentially 
furtive  and  stealthy  policy  practiced  by  individual  workers,  hav¬ 
ing  for  its  aim  the  obstruction  of  industry  and  business  to  such 
an  extent  that  the  employers  will  suffer  a  loss  of  profits  so 
great  as  to  compel  them  to  grant  the  workers’  demands. 

It  may  involve  violence,  or  it  may  be  peaceful.  It  may  involve 
destruction  of  property,  or  it  may  not.  It  may  be  based  on 
illegal  acts,  or  it  may  not.  It  may  consist  of  telling  lies,  or  of 
telling  the  simple  truth.” 

This  is  probably  as  inclusive  a  definition  as  can  be  framed 
Oi  so  elusive  a  doctrine.  Because  of  this  very  elusiveness  it  is 
impossible  for  anyone  to  say  that  he  is  opposed  to  all  acts 
that  go  under  the  name  of  sabotage.  Surely  no  one  can  be 
opposed  to  “telling  the  simple  truth.”  The  advocates  of  sabot¬ 
age  are,  as  a  rule,.  shrewd  enough  to  bring  out  in  their  dis¬ 
cussions  of  the  subject  only  such  inoffensive  forms  of  sabotage 
as  no  one  can  object  to,  and  which,  by  right,  should  not  be 
branded  with  the  name  at  all. 


Mr.  Arturo  M..  Giovannitti,  translator  of  Pouget’ s  book,  “Sa¬ 
botage,  defines  it  as  “A — Any  conscious  and  willful  act  on 
the  part  of  one  or  more  workers  intended  to  slacken  and  reduce 
the  output  of  production  in  the  industrial  field  in  order  to  secure 
from  their  employer  better  conditions,  or  to  enforce  those 
promised,  or  to  maintain  those  already  prevailing,  when  no 
other  way  of  redress  is  open.  B— Any  skillful  operation  on 
the  machinery  of  production  intended  not  to  destroy  it  or  per¬ 
manently  render  it  defective,  but  only  to  temporarily  disable 
it  and  put  it  out  of  running  condition;  in  order  to  make  im¬ 
possible  the  work  of  scabs,  and  thus  secure  the  complete  and 
real  stoppage  of  work  during  a  strike.” 

While  Mr.  Giovannitti’s  definition  is  sufficient  to  damn  sabot¬ 
age  as  a  working  class  weapon,  yet  it  by  no  means  defines  the 
doctrine,  but  merely  gives  the  bounds  to  which  Mr.  Giovan¬ 
nitti,  seeing  danger  ahead,  would  like  the  believers  in  sabotage 
to  confine  themselves.  In  practice,  sabotage  means  what  a 
member  of  the  Industrial  Workers  of  the  World,  a  firm  believer 
in  sabotage,  told  me  that  it  means  to  him  and  his  fellow-work- 


32 


ers— “ANYTHING  OR  EVERYTHING  THAT  WE  THINK 
IS  GOING  TO  HELP  US  WIN.” 

I  have  tested  this  simple  definition  repeatedly  in  my  asso¬ 
ciation  with  believers  in  the  doctrine,  and  I  have  found  that 
this  is  what  sabotage  means  to  the  men  on  the  firing  line  who 
become  imbued  with  the  doctrine. 

The  Socialist  Party  is  opposed  to  sabotage  and  has  repudi¬ 
ated  it  in  convention,  by  referendum  vote,  and  by  vote  of  its 
national  committee.  One  who  practices  or  advocates  sabotage 
can  no  longer  be  a  member  of  the  Socialist  Party.  In  this  the 
Socialist  Party  of  America  has  taken  a  stand  in  harmony  with 
the  stand  taken  by  the  Socialist  Parties  of  other  nations. 

The  Socialist  Party  does  not  take  this  position  because  of 
any  pharisaical  moral  scruples.  The  reasons  for  our  opposi¬ 
tion  are  many,  but  -all  of  them  have  to  do  with  the  demoraliz¬ 
ing  effect  sabotage  has  upon  the  working  class  movement  and 
upon  the  workers  themselves. 

The  effect  of  sabotage  upon  the  working  class  movement 
is  disastrous  because  it  tends  to  substitute  individual  action 
for  class  action.  It  takes  the  emancipation  of  the  working  class 
out  of  the  hands  of  that  class,  and  entrusts  it  to  the  bravado  of 
individuals.  The  doctrine,  therefore,  is  essentially  individualistic 
and  delights  the  heart  of  the  anarchist.  As  in  nearly  every 
case  the  practice  of  sabotage  requires  stealth  and  secrecy,  the 
unions  would  be  honeycombed  with  spies  and  provocators,  sus¬ 
picion  would  be  sown,  and  the  working  class  solidarity  des¬ 
troyed;  the  labor  movement  would  be  outlawed  and  conspiracies 
would  take  the  place  of  labor  union  meetings. 

The  average  working  man  believes  in  the  rule  of  the 
majority.  He  believes  that  laws,  even  those  affecting  capitalist 
property,  should  be  obeyed  as  long  as  they  are  on  the  statute 
books,  and  a  labor  movement  which  dedicates  its  best  efforts 
to  the  systematic  and  secret  breaking  of  the  law  would  lose 
the  ear  of  the  working  class.  Sabotage,  therefore,  while  it 
may  injure  the  individual  capitalist,  would  help  to  perpetuate 
the  capitalist  system  by  estranging  the  workers  from  the 
Socialist  and  labor  union  movements.  The  capitalists  know 
this,  and  for  this  reason  often  are  willing  to  pay  to  have  acts 
of  sabotage  committed,  in  order  to  be  able  to  thrust  the  blame 
upon  the  Socialist  and  labor  union  movements.  There  is,-  of 
course,  the  further  danger  of  having  the  working  class  move¬ 
ment  become  the  pawn  -in  the  struggle  of  rival  capitalists  who 
would  offer  bribes  to  labor  union  men  to  put  competitors  out 
of  business.  In  the  same  manner  the  terrorist  movement  in 
Russia  unwittingly  became  the  weapon  of  one  court  faction 
against  another. 

Still  more  disastrous  is  the  influence  of  sabotage  upon  the 
individual  who  practices  it.  The  STRONGEST  ARGUMENT 
AGAINST  SABOTAGE  IS  THE  SABOTEUR.  The  Jesuitical 
doctrine  that  the  end  justifies  the  means,  with  which  the 
believer  in  sabotage  becomes  impregnated,  renders  him  untrust¬ 
worthy,  not  merely  as  a  workman,  but  as  a  comrade  in  the 
battle  for  freedom. 

To  believe  that  a  working  class  which  sneers  at  truth  and 
common  honesty  as  “capitalistic  notions”  can  bring  about  a 
society  which  would  be  an  improvement  on  what  we  have  today, 
is  to  believe  the  impossible.  Honesty  and  dependability  in  the 
workers,  while  benefiting  the  capitalist  class  today, t  are  indis¬ 
pensable  for  the  society  of  the  future.  We  dare  not  corrupt 
ourselves — not  even  to  spite  the  capitalists! 


23 


(c)  INDUSTRIALISM  IN  THE  AMERICAN  FEDERA¬ 
TION  OF  LABOR. 

Frank  Hayes,  Vice-President  of  the  United  Mine  Workers, 
writes  as  follows  concerning  the  movement  for  industrial  organi¬ 
zation,  in  the  American  Federation  of  Labor: 

“In  the  recent  A.  F.  of  L.  convention  held  at  Rochester,  the 
charter  of  the  Steam  Fitters’  Union  was  revoked  and  they  were 
instructed  to  affiliate  with  the  Plumbers’  Union.  The  conven¬ 
tion  went  on  record  in  favor  of  but  one  union  in  the  pipe  fitting 
industry.  As  a  result  of  this  merger,  there  will  be  no  more 
jurisdictional  disputes  between  steam  fitters  and  plumbers  in 
■the  pipe  fitting  industry,  but  they  will  all  work  together  in  one 
union  for  the  common  cause. 

“At  the  Atlanta  A.  F.  of  L.  convention  in  1911  the  charter 
of  the  Wood  Workers’  Union  was  also  revoked,  and  they  were 
instructed  to  merge  into  the  Carpenters’  Union,  which  means 
that  there  is  now  but  one  union  in  the  wood  working  trade.  In 
brief,  economic  conditions  are  forcing  the  various  craft  unions 
to  merge,  and  as  these  conditions  become  more  pressing,  more 
ol  these  mergers  will  be  in  evidence. 

!  “Our  organization,  the  United  Mine  Workers  of  America, 
has  always  been  an  industrial  organization.  For  instance,  there 
are  fifteen  or  more  trades  represented  in  the  mining  industry, 
such  as  miners,,  engineers,  blacksmiths,  machinists,  carpenters, 
drivers,  electricians,  tracklayers,  timbermen,  trappers,  day  lab¬ 
orers,  etc.,  all  belonging  to  the  one  union — the  United  Mine 
Workers  of  America.  The  coal  hoisting  engineers  thought  they 
would  be  able  to  organize  a  craft  union  in  the  mining  industry, 
separate  and  distinct  from  the  United  Mine  Workers  of  America, 
but  I  am  pleased  to  report  that  this  union  did  not  exist  for  any 
great  length  of  time,  and  that  it  was  absorbed  by  our  organiza¬ 
tion  in  1904,  and  since  that  time  every  craft  in  the  mining 
industry  is  enrolled  under  one  banner. 

The  same  applies  to  the  Western  Federation  of  Miners, 
which  has  jurisdiction  over  all  metal  miners  in  the  country,  and 
the  same  condition  likewise  obtains  in  the  Brewery  Workers’ 
organization  and  I  might  also  say  that  the  sentiment  for  Social¬ 
ism  is  very  strong  in  all  three  of  these  organizations.  I  want 
to  say  further  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  law  of  the  American 
Federation  of  Labor  that  prevents  the  crafts  in  any  one  industry 
from  merging  into  one  union,  and  forming  an  industrial  union. 
There  is  no  law  to  prevent  the  five  different  unions  in  the 
printing  trade  from  merging  into  one  union,  and  all  the  various 
inions  in  the  clothing  trades,  or  the  building  trades,  and  I 
ieel  satisfied  that  when  the  members  of  these  various  organiza- 
:i°ns  come  to  fully  understand  the  benefits  of  industrial  union- 
sm,  they  will  organize  along  industrial  lines. 

As  an  indication  of  the  tendency  in  this  direction,  let  me 
-efer  you  to  the  department  idea,  established  by  the  A.  F.  of  L. 
i  few  years  ago.  We  now  have  in  the  A.  F.  of  L.  the  building 
rades  department  and  several  other  departments  representing 
lifferent  lines  of  industry.  These  trade  departments  hold  meet- 
ngs  annually,  and  discuss  questions  of  interest  to  the  various 
rades  represented  in  the  department.  The  effect  of  these 
lepartments  will  be  to  educate  the  members  along  industrial 
ines,  and  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  the  result  will  be  a  final 
nerging  of  all  the  trades  in  these  departments  into  industrial 
mions,  and  then  we  will  have  a  Building  Trades  Union  of 
vmerica,  embracing  within  its  folds  all  men  employed  in  the 
•uilding  trades;  the  Printing  Trades  Union,  embracing  all  work- 
rs  in  that  industry;  the  Metal  Trades  Union  of  America, 
mbracing  all  the  workers  engaged  in  that  industry,  etc. 

“The  workers  have  the  right  now,  if  they  see  fit,  under  the 


A.  -F.  of  L.  law  to  merge  their  organizations  with  others  in 
the  same  industry,  and  so  the  criticism  that  the  A.  F.  of  L. 
prevents  such  action  is  very  misleading.  All  of  the  international 
unions  connected  with  the  A.  F.  of  L.  exercise  complete  auton¬ 
omy  and  enjoy  to  the  fullest  extent  the  rights  of  self-govern¬ 
ment.  The  A.  F.  of  L.  has  no  authority  to  dictate  to  any  union 
as  to  how  its  business  shall  be  conducted.  In  brief,  the  A.  F. 
of  L.  has  very  little  power.  It  is  practically  nothing  more 
or  less  than  a  national  legislative  body,  or  you  might  term  it 
a  loose  federation  of  international  unions,  each  international 
union  retaining  its  independence  and  working  out  its  own  prob¬ 
lems  in  harmony  with  the  ideas  of  the  majority  of  its  mem¬ 
bership.” 


PART  II. 

THE  CAPITALIST  PARTIES,— FUTILITY  OF 
THEIR  REMEDIES 

1.  The  Republican  Party. 

(a)  REPUBLICAN  PLATFORM _ 1912. 

the  nail  Rrb,iCan  Party’  aSSembIed  by  representatives  in 

e  national  convention,  declares  its  unchanging  faith  in  gov¬ 
ernment  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people  We 
renew  our  allegiance  to  the  principles  of  the  Republican  party!' 

hid  vzz:°:he  cause  °f  Repubikan  ^b- 

U  is  appropriate  that  we  should  now  recall  with  a  sense  of 
veneration  and  gratitude  the  name  of  our  first  great  leader,  who 
was  nominated  m  this  city,  and  whose  lofty  principles  and 
superb  devotion  to  his  country  are  an  inspiration  to  the  party 
he  honored-Abraham  Lincoln,  In  the  present  state  of  public 
affairs  we  should  be  inspired  by  his  broad  statesmanship  and 
by  his  tolerant  spirit  toward  men. 

Looks  Back  on  Record  With  Pride. 

The  Republican  party  looks  bac*k  upon  its  record  with  pride 
and  satisfaction  and  forward  to  its  new  responsibilities  with 
hope  and  confidence.  Its  achievements  in  government  consti¬ 
tute  the  most  luminous  pages  in  our  history.  Our  greatest 
national  advance  has  been  made  during  the  years  of  its  ascend¬ 
ancy  m  public  affairs.  It  has  been  genuinely  and  always  a 
party  of  progress;  it  has  never  been  either  stationary  or  reac- 

*1°"ary:  ,?*  haS  g°ne  from  the  fulfillment  of  one  great  pledge 
to  the  fulfillment  of  another  in  response  to  the  public  need,  and 
to  the  popular  will. 

We  believe  in  our  self-controlled  representative  democracy 
which  is  a  government  of  laws,  not  of  men,  and  in  which  order 
is  the  prerequisite  of  progress. 

Constitution  Has  Been  Effective. 

The  principles  of  constitutional  government,  which  makes 
>rovision  for  orderly  and  effective  expression  of  the  popular 

nd’f  °Mhe-Pr°teCtl0n  °f  dvil  Hberty  and  the  riZhts  of  men 
!  intfrPretation  of  the  law  by  an  untrammeled  and 
ndependent  judiciary  have  proved  themselves  capable  of  sus- 
ainmg  the  structure  of  a  government  which,  after  more  than 
century  of  development,  embraces  one  hundred  millions  of 
•eople,  scattered  over  a  wide  and  diverse  territory,  but  bound 
y  common  purpose,  common  ideals,  and  common  affection  to 
he  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

Under  the  constitution  and  the  principles  asserted  and 
italized  by  it,  the  United.  States  has  grown  to  be  one  of  the 
reat  civilized  and  civilizing  powers  of  the  earth.  It  offers 
home  and  an  opportunity  to  the  ambitious  and  the  industrious 
l0m  other  lands.  Resting  upon  the  broad  basis  of  a  people’s 


support  and  managed  by  the  people  themselves,  the  govern¬ 
ment  of  the  United  States  will  meet  the  problems  of  the  future 
as  satisfactorily  as  it  has  solved  those  of  the  past. 

Social  Legislation. 

The  Republican  party  is  now,  as  always,  a  party  of  advanced 
and  constructive  statesmanship.  It  is  prepared  to  go  forward 
with  the  solution  of  these  new  questions,  which  social,  economic 
and  political  development  have  brought  into  the  forefront  of 
the  nation’s  interest.  It  will  strive,  not  only  in  the  nation,  but 
in  the  several  states,  to  enact  the  necessary  legislation  to  safe¬ 
guard  the  public  health;  to  limit  effectively  the  labor  of  women 
and  children,  and  to  protect  wage  earners  engaged  in  dangerous 
occupations;  to  enact  comprehensive  and  generous  workmen’s 
compensation  laws  in  place  of  the  present  wasteful  and  unjust 
system  of  employer’s  liability;  and  in  all  possible  ways  to 
satisfy  the  just  demand  of  the  people  for  the  study  and  solution 
of  the  complex  and  constantly  changing  problems  of  social 
welfare. 

In  dealing  with  these  questions  it  is  important  that  the 
rights  of  every  individual  to  the  freest  possible  development  of 
his  own  powers  and  resources,  and  to  the  control  of  his  own 
justly  acquired  property,  so  far  as  those  are  compatible  with 
the  rights  of  others,  shall  not  be  interfered  with  or  destroyed. 
The  social  and  political  structure  of  the  United  States  rests 
upon  the  civil  liberty  of  the  individual;  and  for  the  protection 
of  that  liberty  the  people  have  wisely,  in  the  national  and  state 
constitutions,  put  definite  limitations  upon  themselves  and  upon 
their  governmental  officers  and  agencies.  To  enforce  these 
limitations,  to  secure  the  orderly  and  coherent  exercise  of  gov¬ 
ernmental  powers,  and  to  protect  the  rights  of  even  the  humblest 
and  least  favored  individuals  are  the  function  of  independent 
courts  of  justice. 

Upholding  the  Courts. 

The  Republican  party  reaffirms  its  intention  to  uphold  at  all 
times  the  authority  and  integrity  of  the  courts,  both  state  and 
federal,  and  it  will  ever  insist  that  their  powers  to  enforce  their 
process  and  to  protect  life,  liberty  and  property  shall  be  pre¬ 
served  inviolate.  An  orderly  method  is  provided  under  our 
system  of  government  by  which  the  people  may,  when  they 
choose,  alter  or  amend  the  constitutional  provisions  which 
underlie  that  government.  Until  these  constitutional  provisions 
are  so  altered  or  amended,  in  orderly  fashion,  it  is  the  duty 
of  the  courts  to  see  to  it  that  when  challenged  they  are  enforced. 

That  the  courts,  both  federal  and  state,  may  bear  the  heavy 
burden  laid  on  them  to  the  complete  satisfaction  of  public 
opinion,  we  favor  legislation  to  prevent  long  delays,  and  the 
tedious  and  costly  appeals  which  have  so  often  amounted  to 
a  denial  of  justice  in  civil  cases  and  to  a  failure  to  protect  the 
public  at  large  in  criminal  cases. 

Since  the  responsibility  of  the  judiciary  is  so  great,  the 
standards  of  judicial  action  must  be  always  and  everywhere 
above  suspicion  and  reproach.  While  we  regard  the  recall  of 
judges  as  unnecessary  and  unwise,  we  favor  such  action  as  may 
be  necessary  to  simplify  the  process  by  which  any  judge  who 
is  found  to  be  derelict  in  his  duty  may  be  removed  from  office. 

International  Treaties. 

Together  with  peaceful  and  orderly  development  at  home, 
the  Republican  party  earnestly  favors  all  measures  for  the 
establishment  and  protection  of  the  world  and  for  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  closer  relations  between  the  various  nations  of  the 
earth;  it  believes  most  earnestly  in  the  peaceful  settlement 


of  the  international  disputes,  and  in  the  reference  of  air jWffia- 
justic°ntr0VerSleS  between  nations  to  an  international  court  of 

Monopoly  and  Privilege. 

The  Republican  party  is  opposed  to  special  privilege  and 
to  monopoly.  It  placed  upon  the  statute  book  fhe  infe%tate 
commerce  act  of  1887,  and  the  important  amendments  thereto 
antitrust  act  of  1890,  and  it  has  consistently  and  sue- 
cessfully  enforced  the  provisions  of  those  laws.  It  will  take  no 

ste.p.  to  Permit  re-establishment  in  any  degree  of 
conditions  which  were  intolerable.  8 

makes  it  plain  that  the  business  of  the  country 
may  be  carried  on  without  fear  or  without  disturbance  and  a^ 
the  same  time  without  resort  to  practices  which  are  abhorrent 
to  the  common  sense  of  justice.  The  Republican  party  favors 
i?f  len1S!ai10n  suPP^ementary  to  the  existing  anti- 

ictf tW  W^fCh  T1  de?ne  as  criminal  offenses  those  specific 
acts  that  uniformly  mark  attempts  to  restrain  and  to  monopo- 

lize  trade,  to  the  end  that  those  who  honestly  intend  to  obey 
the  law  may  have  a  guide  for  their  action,  and  that  those  who 
aim  to  violate  the  law  may  the  more  surely  be  punished. 

*he  ?ame  certainty  should  be  given  to  the  law  prohibiting 
combinations  and  monopolies  that  characterizes  other  provi¬ 
sions  of  commercial  law,  in  order  that  no  part  of  the  field  of 
business  opportunity  may  be  restricted  by  monopoly  or  com¬ 
bination  that  business  success  honorably  achieved  may  not  be 
converted  into  crime,  and  that  the  right  of  every  man  to  acquire 
commodities,  and  particularly  the  necessaries  of  life,  in  an  open 
market  uninfluenced  by  the  manipulation  of  trust  or  combina¬ 
tion  may  be  preserved. 

Federal  Trade  Commission. 


In  the  enforcement  and  administration  of  federal  laws  gov¬ 
erning  interstate  commerce  and  enterprises  impressed  with  a 
public  use  engaged  therein,  there  is  much  that  may  be  com¬ 
mitted  to  a  federal  trade  commission,  thus  placing  in  the  hands 
of  an  administrative  board  many  of  the  functions  now  neces- 
sanly  exercised  by  the  courts.  This  will  promote  promptness 
in  the  administration  of  the  law  and  avoid  delays  and  technical¬ 
ities  incident  to  court  procedure. 


The  Tariff. 

We  *eaffii;m  our  belief  in  a  protective  tariff.  The  Repub¬ 
lican  tariff  policy  has  been  of  the  greatest  benefit  to  the  country, 
developing  our  resources,  diversifying  our  industries,  and  pro¬ 
tecting  our  workmen  against  competition  with  cheaper  labor 
abroad,  thus  establishing  for  our  wage  earners  the  American 
standard  of  living.  The  protective  tariff  is  so  woven  into  the 
fabric  of  our  industrial  and  agricultural  life  that  to  substitute 
a  tariff  for  revenue  only  would  destroy  many  industries 
and  throw  millions  of  our  people  out  of  employment.  The 
products  of  the  farm,  and  of  the  mine  should  receive  the  same 
measure  of  protection  as  other  products  of  American  labor. 

Expert  Commission  Needed. 

We  hold  that  the  import  duties  should  be  high  enough, 
while  yielding  a  sufficient  revenue,  to  protect  adequately  Amer¬ 
ican  industries  and  wages.  Some  of  the  existing  import  duties 
are  too  high,  and  should  be  reduced.  Readjustment  should  be 
made  from  time  to  time  to  conform  to  changing  conditions  and 
to  reduce  excessive  rates,  but  without  injury  to  any  American 
industry.  To  accomplish  this  correct  information  is  indispens- 


38 


Pis  information  can  best  be  obtained  by  an  expert  com- 
missirm,  as  the  large  volume  of  useful  facts  contained  in  the 
recent  reports  of  the  tariff  board  has  demonsrated. 

The  pronounced  feature  .of  modern  industrial  life  is  its 
enormous  diversification.  To  apply  tariff  rates  justly  to  these 
changing  conditions  requires  closer  study  and  more  scientific 
methods  than  ever  before.  The  Republican  party  has  shown, 
by  its  creation  of  a  tariff  board,  its  recognition  of  this  situation 
and  its  determination  to  be  equal  to  it. 

We  condemn  the  Democratic  party  for  its  failure  either  to 
provide  funds  for  the  continuance  of  this  board  or  to  make  some 
other  provision  for  securing  the  information  requisite  for  intelli¬ 
gent  tariff  legislation.  We  protest  against  the  Democratic 
method  of  legislating  on  these  vitally  important  subjects  with¬ 
out  c&reful  investigation.  We  condemn  the  Democratic  tariff 
bills  passed  by  the  house  of  representatives  of  the  Sixty-second 
congress  as  sectional,  as  injurious  to  the  public  credit  ,and  as 
destructive  of  business  enterprises. 

Cost  of  Living. 

The  steadily  increasing  cost  of  living  has  become  a  matter 
not  only  of  nation  but  of  world-wide  concern.  The  fact  that 
it  is  not  due  to  the  protective  tariff  system  is  evidenced  by  the 
existence  of  similar  conditions  in  countries  which  have  a  tariff 
policy  different  from  our  own,  as  well  as  by  the  fact  that  the 
cost  of  living  has  increased  while  rates  of  duty  have  remained 
stationary  or  been  reduced. 

The  Republican  party  will  support  a  prompt  scientific 
inquiry  into  the  causes  which  are  operative,  both  in  the  United 
States  and  elsewhere,  to  increase  the  cost  of  living.  When  the 
exact  facts  are  known  it  will  take  the  necessary  steps  to  remove 
any  abuses  that  may  be  found  to  exist,  in  order  that  the  cost 
of  the  food,  clothing  and  shelter  of  the  people  may  in  no  way 
be  unduly  or  artificially  increased. 

Banking  and  Currency. 

The  Republican  party  has'  always  stood  for  a  sound  cur¬ 
rency  and  for  safe  banking  methods.  It  is  responsible  for  the 
resumption  of  specie  payments  and  for  the  establishment  of  the 
gold  standard.  It  is  committed  to  the  progressive  development 
of  our  banking  and  currency  system. 

Our  banking  arrangements  today  need  further  revision  to 
meet  the  requirements  of  current  conditions.  We  need  meas¬ 
ures  which  will  prevent  the  recurrence  of  money  panics  and 
financial  disturbances,  and  which  will  promote  the  prosperity 
of  business  and  the  welfare  of  labor  by  producing  constant 
employment.  We  need  better  currency  facilities  for  the  move¬ 
ment  of  crops  in  the  west  and  south.  We  need  banking  ar¬ 
rangements  under  American  auspices  for  the  encouragement 
and  better  conduct  of  our  foreign  trade.  _  . ..A 

In  attaining  these  ends,  the  independence  of  individual 
banks,  whether  organized  under  national  or  state  charters,  must 
be  carefully  protected,  and  our  banking  and,  currency  system 
must  be  safeguarded  from  any  possibility  of  domination  by 
sectional,  financial  or  political  interests.  .  _  - 

It  is  of  great  importance  to  the  social  and  economic  wel¬ 
fare  of  this  country  that  its  farmers  have  facilities  for  borrowing 
easily  and  cheaply  the  money  they  need  to  increase  the  pro¬ 
ductivity  of  their  land.  It  is  as  important  that  the  financial 
machinery  be  provided  to  supply  the  demand  of  farmers  for 
credit  as  it  is  that  the  banking  and  currency  systems  be  re¬ 
formed  in  the  interest  of  general  business.  Therefore,  we  ree* 
ommend  and  urge  an  authoritative  investigation  of  agricultu¥dU 
credit  societies  and  corporations  in  other  countries,  and  thA 


capabfe  slUrZ oTo/lZniJ^  ^  ^^ent  and 
the  loaning  of  funds  to  farmers.  '°nS  aVm8'  for  thelT  Purpose 

The  Civil  Service. 

to  P*^^'he  prin,ciple  0f  appointment 
behavior  and  efficiency  Th7  Republican"  1*7*  I"™*  &°°d 
mated  to  the  maintenance,  extension  and  enf  7  5°ra- 

civil  service  law  and  it  W™  1L  and  enforce™nt  of  the 

a*?  - ?£t  ks~ 

may  be  maintained.  g  standard  of  efficiency 

law  -Vs^^tL^fp^visionftV:!"!6"'  emp,°yer’S  'iaMi* 
as  well  as  to  provide  a  more  liberal  scalf °0Vfemment  emPloyes, 
injury  and  death.  SCale  of  comPensation  for 

Campaign  Contributions. 

moreWeeffeacVt0uallvCtoadd!tb0,nv  legisl3tion  as  may  be  necessary 
funds,  contributing 

the 

in  connection  with  primaries,  conventions  or  elections. 

Conservation  Policy. 

We  rejoice  in  the  success  of  the  distinctive  Republican 

useT  °/l  the  co?sen?tlon  of  our  national  resources,  for  their 

nled^J  6  T°P  6  Wlthout  waste  and  without  monopoly.  We 
pledge  ourselves  to  a  continuance  of  such  a  policy. 

•11  We/aYor  such  fair  and  reasonable  rules  and  regulations  as 
ZpL  dlsc°urage  or  interfere  with  actual  bona  fide  home¬ 
land  rS’  prospf:ot.ors  and  niiners  in  the  acquisition  of  public 
lands  under  existing  laws.  y 

Parcels  Post. 

t.  ln  ,th«  interest  of  the  general  public,  and  particularly  of 

W  tftbU  ?L,°VUra  communities.  we  favor  legislation  look- 
+iTe  esta^llshmentt  nnder  proper  regulations,  of  a  parcels 
post,  the  postal  rates  to  be  graduated  under  a  zone  system  in 
proportion  to  the  length  of  carriage. 

Protection  of  American  Citizenship. 

We  approve  the  action  taken  by  the  President  and  the 
.t0  -uecure  "!th  Russia’  as  with  other  countries,  a 
Iw  y  *u  W1  rec°P!?e  the  absolute  right  of  expatriation  and 
that  will  prevent  all  discrimination  of  whatever  kind  between 
American  citizens,  whether  native  born  or  alien,  and  regardless 
of  race,  religion  or  previous  political  allegiance.  The  right  of 
asylum  is  a  precious  possession  of  the  people  of  the  United 
otates,  and  it  is  to  be  neither  surrendered  nor  restricted. 

Immigration. 

We  pledge  the  Republican  party  to  the  enactment  of  appro¬ 
priate  laws  to  give  relief  from  the  constantly  growing  evil  of 
induced  or  undesirable  immigration,  which  is  inimical  to  the 
progress  and  welfare  of  the  people  of  the  United  States. 

Servitude  at  Sea. 

We  favor  the  speedy  enactment  of  laws  to  provide  that 
seamen  shall  not  be  compelled  to  endure  involuntary  servitude, 


40 


and  that  life  and  property  at  sea  shall  be  safeguarded  by  the 
ample  equipment  of  vessels  with  life-saving  appliances,  and  with 
full  complements  of  skilled,  able-bodied  seamen  to  operate  them. 

Republican  Accomplishments. 

The  approaching  completion  of  the  Panama  Canal,  the 
establishment  of  a  bureau  of  mines,  the  institution  of  postal 
savings  banks,  the  increased  provision  made  in  1912  for  the 
aged  and  infirm  soldiers  and  sailors  of  the  Republic,  and  for 
their  widows,  and  the  vigorous  administration  of  the  laws  re¬ 
lating  to  pure  food  and  drugs,  all  mark  the  successful  progress 
of  Republican  administration,  and  are  additional  evidence  of  its 
effectiveness. 

Economy  and  Efficiency  in  Government. 

We  commend  the  earnest  effort  of  the  Republican  admin¬ 
istration  to  secure  greater  economy  and  increased  efficiency 
in  the  conduct  of  government  business.  Extravagant  appro¬ 
priations  and  the  creation  of  unnecessary  offices  are  an  injustice 
to  the  taxpayers  and  a  bad  example  to  the  citizens. 

The  Navy. 

We  believe  in  the  maintenance  of  an  adequate  navy  for  the 
national  defense,  and  we  condemn  the  action  of  the  Democratic 
House  of  Representatives  in  refusing  to  authorize  the  construc¬ 
tion  of  additional  ships. 

Merchant  Marine. 

We  believe  that  one  of  the  country’s  most  urgent  needs  is 
a  revived  merchant  marine.  There  should  be  American  ships, 
and  plenty  of  them,  to  make  use  of  the  great  American  inter- 
oceanic  canal  now  nearing  completion. 

Flood  Prevention  in  Mississippi  Valley. 

The  Mississippi  river  is  the  nation’s  drainage  ditch.  Its 
flood  waters,  gathered  from  thirty-one  states,  and  the  Dominion 
of  Canada,  constitute  an  overpowering  force,  which  breaks  the 
levees  and  pours  its  torrents  over  many  million  acres  of  the 
richest  lands  in  the  union,  stopping  mails,  impeding  commerce 
and  causing  great  loss  of  life  and  property. 

These  floods  are  national  in  scope,  and  the  disasters  they 
produce  seriously  affect  the  general  welfare.  The  states  unaided 
can  not  cope  with  this  giant  problem;  hence  we  believe  the 
federal  government  should  assume  a  fair  proportion  of  the 
burden  of  its  control  so  as  to  prevent  the  disasters  from  re¬ 
curring  floods. 

Reclamation. 

We  favor  the  continuance  of  the  policy  of  the  government 
with  regard  to  the  reclamation  of  arid  lands;  and  for  the  en¬ 
couragement  of  the  speedy  settlement  and  improvement  of  such 
lands  we  favor  an  amendment  to  the  law  that  will  reasonably 
extend  the  time  within  which  the  cost  of  any  reclamation 
project  may  be  repaid  by  the  land  owners  under  it. 

Rivers  and  Harbors. 

We  favor  a  liberal  and  systematic  policy  for  the  improve¬ 
ment  of  our  rivers  and  harbors.  Such  improvements  should  be 
made  upon  expert  information  and  after  careful  comparison  of 
the  cost  and  prospective  benefits. 

Alaska. 

We  favor  a  liberal  policy  toward  Alaska  to  promote  the 
development  of  the  great  resources  of  that  district,  with  such 
safeguards  as  will  prevent  waste  and  monopoly. 


\y 


41 


throS  Ia  W  lnTuUa?etrasde;i!rS 

fheep0acificntocean  ^  ^  the  navy  and  commerce  of 

prevLt  monopo";/  reta‘nmg  title  in  the  United  States  to 

Philippines  Policy. 

-  frr;r.= 

wlkh  ■i°*,d 

Lynchings. 

=  .Weaal1  uP°n  the  People  to  quicken  their  interest  in  public 
affairs,  to  condemn  and  punish  lynchings,  and  other  forms  of 
lawlessness,  and  to  strengthen  in  all  possible  ways  a  respect  for 
law  and  the  observance  of  it.  Indifferent  citizenship  Is  an  e^l 

whkh  t  3W  aff°rds  no  ade<luate  Protection  and  for 
which  legislation  can  provide  no  remedy. 

Arizona  and  New  Mexico. 

congratulate  the  people  of  Arizona  and  New  Mexico 
upon  the  admission  of  those  states,  thus  merging  in  the  union 

“ontrnentaf  teTrUory®  **  laSt  remainhlg  Portion  °f 

Republican  Administration. 

W*  challenge  successful  criticism  of  the  sixteen  years  of 

felt  an'd  T=,fafdmwStnatl°”,  under  Presidents  McKinley,^  Roose- 
Helff  ■  We  heartl  y  reaffirm  the  endorsement  of  Presi- 

fw  If  5m  -e/  co"talned  ln  the  platforms  of  1900  and  1904  and 
andl908PreSldent  Roosevelt  contained  in  the  platforms  of  1904 

unoffh  m!>lte  th?  in.tellis?nt  judgment  of  the  American  people 
upon  the  administration  of  W.  H.  Taft.  The  country  has  pros- 

fe reu-a?d.be?n  1  Peace  under  his  presidency.  During  the  years 
in  which  he  had  the  co-operation  of  a  Republican  Congress  an 

nasSrfn^l,  am0“nt  of  constructive  legislation  was  framed  and 

wish  d  Th  lh?  m  ,ereSt  °f  the  Pe°Ple  and  in  obedience  to  their 
wish.  That  legislation  is  a  record  on  which  any  administration 
mighty.appeal  with  confidence  to  the  favorable  judgment  of 

pVe  appeal  to  the  American  electorate  upon  the  record  of 
the  Republican  party  and  upon  this  declaration  of  its  principles 

thf  2nSf'  hWe  arevCOnfident  that  under  ^e  leadership  of 
the  candidates  here  to  be  nominated  our  appeal  will  not  be  in 

vain;  that  the  Republican  party  will  meet^veryTust  expect" 
tion  of  the  people  whose  servant  it  is;  that  under  its  adminis¬ 
tration  and  its  laws  our  nation  will  continue  to  advance-  that 
peace  and  Prosperity  will  abide  with  the  people;  and  thai  new 
glory  will  be  added  to  the  great  republic. 

(b)  BRIEF  HISTORY  OF  THE  REPUBLICAN  PARTY. 
(Excerpts  from  “Business"  by  Charles  Edward  Russell.) 

Few  parties  have  had  nobler  origin.  The  innermost  hearts 
of  men,  the  last  sublimity  of  their  souls,  told  them  that  the 
unrighteousness  of  slavery  had  gone  far  enough.  Conscience 
could  endure  no  more.  There  was  a  moral  revolt  against  the 
sin  and  crime  and  shame  of  this  thing:  men  put  their  backs 
to  the  wall  and  said  they  would  endure  no  more.  *  *  * 

Early  Scandals. 

Being  thus  born  of  what  may  be  called  a  passion  for  right¬ 
eousness,  and  withstanding  well  the  first  test  of  an  unequaled 


crisis,  there, was  substance  for  a  time  in  the  familiar  boast  of 
its  champions  that  it  was  a  party  of  moral  ideas. 

But  it  paid  the  almost  certain  penalty  of  great  success  and 
the  passing  of  the  original  moral  impulse.  With  the  close  of 
the  war,  the  progress  of  reconstruction,  the  long  lease  of 
power,  there  began  to  be  sown  and  reaped  successive  crops 
of  scandals;  the  Freedmen’s  Bureau,  the  Credit  Mobilier,  the 
Whisky  Ring  frauds,  the  back  salary  grab,  the  abuse  of  the 
franking  privilege,  stained,  one  after  another,  the  good  record. 
Moreover,  for  the  sake  of  'success  upon  one  issue  it  had  bartered 
away  justice  on  another  issue.  Thereby  it  had  implanted  in  its 
heart  the  germ  of  its  own  ruin,  and  this  distemper  quickly  began 
to  manifest  itself.  *  *  * 

It  was  called  the  Protective  Tariff.  *  *  * 

The  Protective  Tariff. 

Being  thus  committed  to  Protection  (which  was  an  old  whig 
doctrine)  the  exigencies  of  the  Civil  War  furnished  an  excuse 
for  an  abnormally  high  degree  of  protection,  and  the  country 
saw  the  heaviest  import  duties  it  had  ever  known.  *  *  * 

It  produced  the  first  great  menacing  fortunes  we  had  in  this 
country.  *  *  * 

It  developed  a  new  and  powerful  set  of  Privileged  Interests 
that  before  long  began  to  dominate  national  affairs  in  much  the 
same  manner  as  the  slaveholding  Privileged  Interests  had  dom¬ 
inated  affairs  before  the  Civil  War.  *  *  * 

The  new  interests  made  their  huge  profits  by  means  of  an 
unfair  advantage  upon  the  public.  This  advantage  they  secured 
from  legislation;  the  legislation  lay  in  the  hands  of  the  men 
who  directed  the  party  and  wished  to  remain  in  power,  and  the 
success  of  the  party  could  be  secured  (most  often)  by  campaign 
subscriptions.  The  Interests  paid  over  the  counter  their  cam¬ 
paign  subscriptions  and  helped  themselves  to  more  privileges 
from  the  national  shelves.  This  is  the  true  nature  of  the  trans¬ 
action. 

Campaign  Contributions  Corrupt  the  Party. 

The  necessity  of  great  campaign  funds  was  first  chiefly  to 
make  “aggressive  campaigns”  of  noise  and  fictitious  enthusiasm 
and  to  “get  out  the  vote;”  but  after  a  while  the  venal  element 
came  to  be  very  important,  until  its  manipulation  was  a  craft  or  a 
business  in  which  both  parties  had  about  equal  shares,  varying 
with  the  amounts  of  their  respective  campaign  funds.  Thus  the 
business  of  buying  high  tariff  duties  or  other  governmental 
favors  at  the  top  became  colonization,  false  registration,  and 
wholesale  bribing  when  it  had  filtered  to  the  bottom,  and  what 
was  a  huge  evil  at  the  source  was  a  monstrous  crime  in  the  full 
stream.  *  *  * 

The  whole  thing  was  rotten  and  produced  a  huge  crop  of 
still  worse  rottenness.  The  example  of  monstrous  fortunes 
suddenly  gathered  with  the  help  of  the  Government  through 
the  tariff,  started  a  brood  of  fortune  gatherers  that  wanted  other 
advantages.  If  one  set  of  men  could  prey  on  the  public  in  one 
way,  another  set  naturally  wanted  to  prey  on  it  in  another  way. 
The  Standard  Oil  Company,  of  whose  law-breaking  the  famous 
and  comic  $29,000,000  fine  covers  an  infinitesimal  part,  marshaled 
the  way  to  corporation  knavery.  Evolution  fell  in  upon  the 
same  side.  The  sure  process  of  consolidation  and  improved 
economy  made  great  corporations  inevitable,  and  the  great  and 
enormously  powerful  corporations  became  in  turn  bargainers 
with  campaign  subscriptions,  and  the  once  splendid  Republican 
party,  the  first  breath  of  whose  life  had  been  opposition  to  the 


hckeyStS’  beCame  °f  the  Interests  the  'bou«d  and  beaten 

The  Interests  Control. 

dominated  ^Jonventionl  and^^ 

Only  one  thing  kept  them  from  imminent  death  Th 

— 'iSHS 

pips?— :ss§ 

ever  votes  they  needed.  Their  agents  went  out  and  bought 
they  h;daenoughW°Ui  *  Uy  P°tat°eS  °r  COrn'  until  th^  knew 

i;P7hernreridentiaI  election  of  1892  the  .  situation  changed  « 
ittle,  for  the  Interests  reverted  to  the  plan  of  1884  (which  had 

Wh  /  r"d  i?  be  Ch^ap  and  efficient).  and  secured  control  of 
both  parties  by  securing  control  of  certain  leaders.  There  had 

The  ,devf  °pef  ?th®r  Interests  than  the  Protected  Interests^ 
The  trusts  and  the  banks  (having  practically  the  same  owners) 
were  now  more  .mportant  than  the  manufacturers,  and  These 

“  fearrWharhcaVery-beglfnni?g  they  shouId  have  nothing 
.  What  campaign  funds  the  Interests  contributed  that 

year  were  evenly  divided  between  the  two  parties  and  tWs  divb 
sion  materially  rduced  the  normal  Republican  supply.  *  *. 

Meantime  there  had  come  over  conditions  in  the  country  a 
very  great  change.  The  supremacy  of  the  corporations  and  the 
Interests  had  become  as  the  supremacy  of  the  slaveholdinsr  In 
terests  had  been  in  1850.  It  was,  intact,  a  naTnal  sc^ndaT 

as  ^  Pldb  n*n  Party  f°Und  ltself  ln  exactly  'the  same  position 
as  the  old  Democratic  party  before  the  war.  Born  to  oppose 

effortsnttereStS’-  14  Jh“a  ™ded  by  becoming  the  chattel.  The 
‘  -reV‘Vfe  dCad  1SSUCS  fa‘Ied’  and  Congress  was  forced 
into  a  series  of  attempts  to  deal  with  the  increasing  evil  by 
regulating  it.  When  these  efforts  to  curb  corporation  power 
CamTe.t0nbe  sinned,  their  practical  futility  was  apparent.  *  *  * 

.  An  R^Pubbcan  Party  being  obviously  owned  by  the  Interests 
and  therefore  become  inert,  had  avoided  the  only  vital  issue  of 
the  times  and  men  laughed  and  sneered  at  its  stale  platitudes 
and  ridiculous  bombast  concerning  the  things  long  moribund 
As  is  the  race  of  leaves  so  is  the  race  of  parties.  To  this 
melancholy  downfall  had  come  the  party  of  Charles  Sumner 
and  Henry  Wilson,  Thaddeus  Stevens  and  Abraham  Lincoln 
and  all  from  one  reason.  It  had  ceased  to  mean  anything  to 
the  great  cause  of  man — and  when  that  happens  to  a  party  or 
to  a  person  in  this  world,  the  party  or  the  person  is  dead.  *  *  * 


2.  The  Democratic  Party. 

(a)  DEMOCRATIC  PLATFORM— 1912. 

We  declare  it  to  be  a  fundamental  principle  of  the  Demo¬ 
cratic  party  that  the  Federal  Government  under  the  Constitution 
has  no  right  or  power  to  impose  or  collect  tariff  duties,  except 
tor  the  purpose  of  revenue,  and  we  demand  that  the  collection 
of  such  taxes  shall  be  limited  to  the  necessities  of  government 
honestly  and  economically  administered. 

The  high  Republican  tariff  is  the  principal  cause  of  the 


44 


\\ 


unequal  distribution  of  wealth;  it  is  a  system  of  taxation,  which 
makes  the  rich  richer,  and  the  poor  poorer;  under  its  operations 
the  American  farmer,  and  laboring  men  are  the  chief  sufferers; 
it  raises  the  cost  of  the  necessaries  of  life  to  them,  but  does  not 
protect  their  product  or  wages.  The  farmer  sells  largely  in  free 
markets,  and  buys  almost  entirely  in  the  protected  markets.  In 
the  most  highly  protected  industries,  such  as  cotton  and  wool, 
steel  and  iron,  the  wages  of  the  laborers  are  the  lowest  paid  in 
any  of  our  industries.  We  denounce  the  Republican  pretense 
on  that  subject  and  assert  that  American  wages  are  established 
by  competitive  conditions,  and  not  by  the  tariff. 

We  favor  the  immediate  downward  revision  of  the  existing 
high,  and  in  many  cases  prohibitive  tariff  duties,  insisting  that 
material  reduction  be  speedily  made  upon  the  necessaries  of  life. 
Articles  entering  into  competition  with  trust  controlled  prod¬ 
ucts  and  articles  of  American  manufacture  which  are  sold  abroad 
more  cheaply  than  at  home  should  be  put  upon  the  free  list. 

We  recognize  that  our  system  of  tariff  taxation  is  intimately 
connected  with  the  business  of  the  country  and  we  favor  the 
ultimate  attainment  of  the  principles  we  advocate  by  legislation 
that  will  not  injure  or  destroy  legitimate  industry. 

We  denounce  the  action  of  Taft  in  vetoing  the  bills  to  reduce 
the  tariff  in  the  cotton,  woolen,  metals  and  chemical  schedules, 
and  the  farmers’  free  list  bill,  all  of  which  were  designed  to 
give  immediate  relief  to  the  masses  from  the  exactions  of  the 
trusts. 

The  Republican  Party,  while  promising  tariff  revision,  has 
shown  by  its  tariff  legislation  that  such  revision  is  not  to  be  in 
the  people’s  interests,  and,  having  been  faithless  to  its  pledges 
of  1908,  it  should  no  longer  enjoy  the  confidence  of  the  nation. 
We  appeal  to  the  American  people  to  support  us  in  our  demand 
for  a  tariff  for  revenue  only. 

High  Cost  of  Living. 


The  high  cost  of  living  is  a  serious  problem  in  every  Ameri¬ 
can  home.  The  Republican  Party,  in  its  platform,  attempts,  to 
escape  from  responsibility  for  present  conditions  by  denying 
that  they  are  due  to  a  protective  tariff.  We  take  issue  with 
them  on  this  subject,  and  charge  that  excessive  prices  result 
in  a  large  measure  from  the  high  tariff  laws  enacted  and  main¬ 
tained  by  the  Republican  party  and  from  trusts  and  commercial 
conspiracies  fostered  and  encouraged  by  such  laws,  and  w# 
assert  that  no  substantial  relief  can  be  secured  for  the  people 
until  import  duties  on  the  necessaries  of  life  are  materially 
reduced,  and  these  criminal  conspiracies  broken  up. 

We  insist  upon  the  full  exercise  of  all  the  powers  of  the 
government,  both  state  and  national,  to  protect  the  people  from 
injustice  at  the  hands  of  those  who  seek  to  make  the  govern¬ 
ment  a  private  asset  in  business.  There  is  no  twilight  zone 
between  the  nation  and  the  state  in  which  exploiting  mterert. 
can  take  refuge  from  both.  It  is  as  necessary  tha :  the  federal 
government  shall  exercise  the  powers  delegated  to  it  as  it  1* 
that  the  states  shall  exercise  the  powers  reserved  to  them,  bu 
we  insist  that  federal  remedies  for  the.  regulation  ofint"'j.U*' 
commerce  and  for  the  prevention  of  private  monopoly  shall  be 
added  to  and  not  substituted  for  state  remedies. 

Income  Tax  and  Popular  Election  of  Senators. 

We  congratulate  the  country  upon  the  triumph  of  two  im¬ 
portant  reforms  demanded  in  the  last  national  platform,  namely, 
the  amendment  of  the  federal  constitution  authorizing  an  income 
t^Tnd  the  amendment  providing  for  the  popular  election  of 
senators,  and  we  call  upon  the  people  of  all  states  to  rally  to  the 


45 


support  of  the  pending  propositions  and  secure  their  ratifica¬ 
tion. 

Anti-Trust  Law. 

A  private  monopoly  is  indefensible  and  intolerable.  We 
therefore  favor  the  vigorous  enforcement  of  the  criminal  as  well 
as  the  civil  law  against  trust  and  trust  officials,  and  demand  the 
enactment  of  such  additional  legislation  as  may  be  necessary  to 
make  it  impossible  for  a  private  monopoly  to  exist  in  the  United 
States. 

We  favor  the  declaration  by  law  of  the  conditions  upon 
which  corporations  shall  be  permitted  to  engage  in  interstate 
trade,  including,  among  others,  the  prevention  of  holding  com¬ 
panies,  of  interlocking  directors,  of  stock  watering,  of  discrim¬ 
ination  in  price,  and  the  control  by  any  one  corporation  of  so 
large  a  proportion  of  any  industry  as  to  make  it  a  menace  to 
competitive  conditions. 

We  condemn  the  action  of  the  republican  administration  in 
compromising  with  the  Standard  Oil  Company  and  the  Tobacco 
Trust,  and  its  failure  to  invoke  the  criminal  provisions  of  the 
anti-trust  law  against  the  officers  of  those  corporations  after 
the  court  had  declared  that  from  the  undisputed  facts  in  the 
record  they  had  violated  the  criminal  provisions  of  the  law. 

We  regret  that  the  Sherman  anti-trust  law  has  received  a 
judicial  construction  depriving  it  of  much  of  its  efficiency,  and 
we  favor  the  enactment  of  legislation  which  will  restore  to  the 
statute  the  strength  of  which  it  has  been  deprived  by  such  inter¬ 
pretation. 

Rights  of  the  States. 

We  believe  in  the  preservation  and  maintenance  in  their  full 
strength  and  integrity  of  the  three  co-ordinate  branches  of  the 
federal  government— the  executive,  the  legislative,  and  the 
judicial — each  keeping  within  its  own  bounds,  and  not  encroach¬ 
ing  upon  the  just  powers  of  either  of  the  others. 

Believing  that  the  most  efficient  results  under  our  system  of 
government  are  to  be  attained  by  the  full  exercise  by  the  (states 
of  their  reserved  sovereign  powers,  we  denounce  as  usurpation 
the  efforts  of  our  opponents  to  deprive  the  states  of  any  of  the 
rights  reserved  to  them,  and  to  enlarge  and  magnify,  by  indi¬ 
rection,  the  powers  of  the  federal  government. 

Presidential  Primaries. 

The  movement  .toward  more  popular  government  should  be 
promoted  through  legislation  in  each  state  which  will  permit 
the  expression  of  the  preference  of  the  electors  for  national 
candidates  at  presidential  primaries. 

We  direct  that  the  national  committee  incorporate  in  the 
call  for  the  next  nominating  convention  a  requirement  that  all 
expressions  of  preference  for  presidential  candidates  shall  be 
given  and  the  selection  of  delegates  and  alternates  made  through 
a  primary  election  conducted  by  the  party  organization  in  each 
state  where  such  expression  and  election  are  not  provided  for 
by  state  law.  Committeemen  who  are  hereafter  to  constitute 
the  membership  of  the  democratic  national  committee  and  whose 
election  is  not  provided  for  by  law  shall  be  chosen  in  each  state 
at  such  primary  elections  and  the  service  and  authority  of  com¬ 
mitteemen,  however  chosen,  shall  begin  immediately  upon  the 
receipt  of  their  credentials,  respectively. 

Campaign  Contributions. 

We  pledge  the  Democratic  party  to  the  enactment  of  a  law 
prohibiting  any  corporation  from  contributing  to  a  campaign 


46 


fund  and  any  individual  from  contributing  any  amount  above 
a  reasonable  maximum. 

Term  of  President. 

We  favor  a  single  presidential  term,  and  to  that  end  urge 
the  adoption  of  an  amendment  to  the  constitution  making  the 
president  of  the  United  States  ineligible  to  re-election,  and  we 
pledge  the  candidate  of  this  convention  to  this  principle. 

Democratic  Congress. 

At  this  time,  when  the  Republican  party,  after  a  generation 
of  unlimited  power  in  its  control  of  the  federal  government,  is 
rent  into  factions,  it  is  opportune  to  point  to  the  record  of 
accomplishment  of  the  Democratic  House  of  Representatives  in 
the  Sixty-second  Congress.  We  endorse  its  action  and  we  chal¬ 
lenge  comparison  of  its  record  with  that  of  any  Congress  which 
h^s  been  controlled  by  our  opponents.  We  call  the  attention 
of  the  patriotic  citizens  of  our  country  to  its  record  of  efficiency, 
economy  and  constructive  legislation. 

It  has,  among  other  achievements,  revised  the  rules  of  the 
House  of  Representatives  so  as  to  give  to  the  representative 
of  the  American  people  freedom  of  speech  and  of  action  in 
advocating,  proposing  and  perfecting  remedial  legislation. 

It  has  passed  'bills  for  the  relief  of  the  people  and  the  devel¬ 
opment  of  our  country;  it  has  endeavored  to  revise  the  tariff 
taxes  downward  in  .  the  interest  of  the  consuming  masses  and 
thus  to  reduce  the  high  cost  of  living. 

It  has  proposed  an  amendment  to  the  federal  constitution 
providing  for  the  election  of  United  States  senators  by  the  direct 
vote  of  the  people. 

It  has  secured  the  admission  of  Arizona  and  New  Mexico  as 
two  sovereign  states. 

It  has  required  the  publicity  of  campaign  expenses  both 
before  and  after  election  and  fixed  a  limit  upon  the  election 
expenses  of  United  States  senators  and  representatives. 

It  has  passed  a  bill  to  prevent  the  abuse  of  the  writ  of 
injunction. 

It  has  passed  a  law  establishing  an  eight-hour  day  for  work¬ 
men  on  all  national  public  work. 

It  has  passed  a  resolution  which  forced  the  President  to 
take  immediate  steps  to  abrogate  the  Russian  treaty. 

And  it  has  passed  the  great  supply  bills  which  lessen  waste 
and  extravagance  and  which  reduce  the  annual  expenses  of  the 
government  by  many  millions  of  dollars. 

We  approve  the  measure  reported  by  the  Democratic  leaders 
in  the  House  of  Representatives  for  the  location  of  a  council 
of  national  defense,  which  will  determine  a  definite  naval  pro¬ 
gram  with  a  view  to  increasing  efficiency  and  economy. 

The  party  that  proclaimed  and  has  always  enforced  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  and  was  a  sponsor  for  the  new  navy,  will 
continue  faithfully  to  observe  the  constitutional  requirements 
to  provide  and  maintain  an  adequate  and  well-proportioned 
navy,  sufficient  to  defend  American  policies,  protect  our  citizens 
and  uphold  the  honor  and  dignity  of  the  nation. 

Republican  Extravagance. 

We  denounce  the  profligate  waste  of  the  money  wrung  from 
the  people  by  oppressive  taxation  through  the  lavish  appropri¬ 
ation  of  recent  Republican  congresses,  which  have  kept  taxes 
high  and  reduced  the  purchasing  power  of  the  people’s  toil.  We 
demand  a  return  to  that  simplicity  and  economy  which  befits 
a  Democratic  government  and  a  reduction  in  the  number  of 


/  47 

useless  offices,  the  salaries  of  which  drain  the  substance  of  the 
people. 

Railroads,  Express  Companies,  Telegraph  and  Telephone  Lines. 

We  favor  the  efficient  supervision  and  rate  regulation  of 
railroads,  express  companies,  telegraph  and  telephone  lines 
engaged  in  interstate  commerce.  To  this  end  we  recommend 
the  valuation  of  railroads,  express  companies,  telegraph  and 
telephone  lines  by  the  interstate  commerce  commission,  such 
valuation  to  take  into  consideration  the  physical  value  of  the 
property,  the  original  cost,  the  cost  of  reproduction,  and  any 
element  of  value  that  will  render  the  valuation  fair  and  just. 

_We  favor  such  legislation  as  will  effectually  protect  the 
railroads,  express,  telegraph  and  telephone  companies  from 
engaging  in  business  which  brings  them  into  competition  with 
their  shippers  or  patrons;  also  legislation  preventing  the  over¬ 
issue  of  stocks  and  bonds  by  interstate  railroads,  express  com¬ 
panies,  telegraph  and  telephone  lines  and  legislation  which  will 
assure  such  reduction  in  transportation  rates  as  conditions  will 
permit,  care  being  taken  to  avoid  reduction  that  would  compel 
a  reduction  of  wages,  prevent  adequate  service,  or  do  injustice 
to  legitimate  investments. 

Banking  Legislation. 

We  oppose  the  so-called  Aldrich  bill  or  the  establishment 
of  a  central  bank;  and  we  believe  our  country  will  be  largely 
freed  from  panics  and  consequent  unemployment  and  business 
depression  by  such  a  systematic  revision  of  our  banking  laws 
as  will  render  temporary  relief  in  localities  where  such  relief 
is  needed,  with  protection  from  control  or  domination  by  what 
is  known  as  the  money  trust. 

Banks  exist  for  the  accommodation  of  the  public  and  not 
for  the  control  of  business.  All  legislation  on  the  subject  of 
banking  and  currency  should  have  for  its  purpose  the  securing 
of  these  accommodations  on  terms  of  absolute  security  to  the 
public  and  of  complete  protection  from  the  misuse  of  the 
power  that  wealth  gives  to  those  who  possess  it. 

We  condemn  the  present  methods  . of  depositing  government 
funds  in  a  few  favored  banks,  largely  situated  in  or  controlled 
by  Wall  street,  in  return  for  political  fayors,  and  we  pledge 
our  party  to  provide  by  law  for  their  deposit  by  competitive 
bidding  in  the  banking  institutions  of  the  country,  national  and 
state,  without  discrimination  as  to  locality,  upon  approved  se¬ 
curities  and  subject  to  call  by  the  government. 

Rural  Credits. 

Of  equal  importance  with  the  question  of  currency  reform 
is  the  question  of  rural  credits  or  agricultural  finance.  There¬ 
fore  we  recommend  that  an  investigation  of  agricultural  credit 
societies  in  foreign  countries  be  made,  so  that  it  may  be  ascer¬ 
tained  whether  a  system  of  rural  credits  may  be  devised  suit¬ 
able  to  conditions  in  the  United  States;  and  we  also  favor 
legislation  permitting  national  banks  to  loan  a  reasonable  pro¬ 
portion  of  their  funds  on  real  estate  security. 

We  recognize  the  value  of  vocational  education  and  urge 
federal  appropriations  for  such  training  and  extension  teaching 
in  agriculture  in  co-operation  with  the  several  states. 

Waterways. 

We  renew  the  declaration  in  our  last  platform  relating  to 
the  conservation  of  our  natural  resources  and  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  our  waterways. 

The  present  devastation  of  the  lower  Mississippi  valley  ac¬ 
tuates  the  movement  for  the  regulation  of  river  flow  by 


48 


additional  bank  and  levee  protection  below  and  the  diversion, 
stage  and  control  of  the  flood  water  above  and  their  utilization 
for  beneficial  purposes  in  the  reclamation  of  swamp  lands  and 
the  development  of  water  power,  instead  of  permitting  the 
floods  to  continue,  as  heretofore,  agents  of  destruction. 

We  hold  that  the  control  of  the  Mississippi  river  is  a 
national  problem.  The  preservation  of  the  depth  of  its  water 
for  the  purpose  of  navigation,  the  building  of  levees  to  main¬ 
tain  the  integrity  of  its  channel,  and  the  prevention  of  the 
overflow  of  the  land  and  its  consequent  devastation,  resulting 
in  the  interruption  of  interstate  commerce,  the  disorganization 
of  the  mail  service  and  the  enormous  loss  of  life  and  property, 
impose  an  obligation  which  alone  can  be  discharged  by  the 
general  government. 

To  maintain  an  adequate  depth  of  water  the  entire  year 
and  thereby  encourage  water  transportation  is  a  consumma¬ 
tion  worthy  of  legislative  attention  and  presents  an  issue  na¬ 
tional  in  its  character.  It  calls  for  prompt  action  on  the  part 
of  Congress,  and  the  Democratic  party  pledges  itself  to  the 
enactment  of  legislation  leading  to  that  end. 

Y/e  favor  the  co-operation  of  the  United  States  with  the 
respective  states  in  plans  for  the  comprehensive  treatment  of 
all  waterways  with  a  view  of  co-ordinating  plans  for  channel 
improvement  with  plans  for  drainage  of  swamp  and.  ov^r” 
flowed  lands,  and  to  this  end  we  favor  the  appropriation  by 
the  federal  government  of  sufficient  funds  to  make  surveys  of 
such  lands,,  to  develop  for  drainage  the  same  and  to  supervise 
the  work  of  construction. 

We  favor  the  adoption  of  a  liberal  and  comprehensive  plan 
for  the  development  of  our  inland  waterways,  with  economy 
and  efficiency,  so  as  to  permit  their  navigation  by  vessels  of 
standard  draft.  # 


Post  Roads. 


We  favor  national  aid  to  state  and  local  authorities  in  the 
construction  and  maintenance  of  post  roads. 


Courts. 


We  repeat  our  declaration  of  the  platform  of  1908,  as 

follows:  ...  .  , 

“The  courts  of  justice  are  the  bulwark  of  our  liberties  and 

we  yield  to  none  in  our  purpose  to  maintain  their  dignity.  9m 
party  has  given  to  the  bench  a  long  line  of  distinguished  justices 
who  have  added  to  the  respect  and  confidence  in  which  this 
department  must  be  zealously  maintained.  We  resent  the 
attempt  of  the  Republican  party  to  raise  a  false  issue  respect 
ing  the  judiciary.  It  is  an  unjust  reflection  upon  a  great  body 
of  our  citizens  to  assume  that  they  lack  respect  for  the  courts, 
“It  is  the  function  of  the  courts  to  interpret  the  laws  which 
the  people  enact,  and  if  the  laws  appear  to  work  economic, 
social  or  political  injustice,  it  is  our  duty  to  change  them.  Th<j 
only  basis  upon  which  the  integrity  of  our  courts  can  be  main¬ 
tained  is  that  of  unswerving  justice  and  protection  of  life,  persoif 
and  property.  As  judicial  processes  may  be  abused,  we  shoulc 
guard  them  against  abuse. 

“Experience  has  proven  the  necessity  of  a  modification  o 
the  present  law  relating  to  injunction,  and  we  reiterate  th<! 
pledges  of  our  platforms  of  1896  and  1904  in  favor  of  a  measure 
which  passed  the  United  States  Senate  in  1896,  relating  to  con 
tempt  in  federal  courts  and  providing  for  trial  by  jury  in  case 
of  indirect  contempt. 

“Questions  of  judicial  practice  have  arisen,  especially  in  con 
nection  with  industrial  disputes.  We  believe  that  the  parties  t, 
all  judicial  proceedings  should  be  treated  with  rigid  impartialit 


49 

and  that  injunctions  should  not  be  issued  in  any  case  in  which 
an  injunction  would  not  be  issued  if  no  industrial  dispute  were 
involved. 

Rights  of  Labor. 

The  expanding  organization  of  industry  makes  it  essential 
that  there  should  be  no  abridgment  of  the  right  of  the  wage 
earners  and  producers  to  organize  for  the  protection  of  wages 
and  the  improvement  of  labor  conditions,  to  the  end  that  such 
labor  organizations  and  their  members  should  not  be  regarded 
as  illegal  combinations  in  restraint  of  trade. 

We  pledge  the  Democratic  party  to  the  enactment  of  a  law 
creating  a  department  of  labor  represented  separately  in  the 
president’s  cabinet,  in  which  department  shall  be  included  the 
subject  of  mines  and  mining. 

“We  pledge  the  Democratic  party,  so  far  as  the  federal  juris¬ 
diction  extends,  to  an  employes’  compensation  law  providing 
adequate  indemnity  for  injury  to  body  or  loss  of  life.” 

Conservation. 

We  believe  in  the  conservation  and  the  development,  for  the 
use  of  all  the  people,  of  the  natural  resources  of  the  country 
Our  forests,  our  sources  of  water  supply,  our  arable  and  our 
mineral  lands,  our  navigable  streams  and  all  our  other  material 
resources,  with  which  our  country  has  been  so  lavishly  endowed, 
constitute  the  foundation  of  our  national  wealth.  Such  addi¬ 
tional  legislation  as  may  be  necessary  to  prevent  their  being 
wasted  or  absorbed  by  special  or  privileged  interests  should  be 
enacted  and  the  policy  of  their  conservation  should  be  rigidly 
adhered  to. 

The  public  domain  should  be  administered  and  disposed  of 
with  due  regard  to  the  general  welfare.  Reservations  should  be 
limited  to  the  purposes  which  they  purport  to  serve  and  not 
extended  to  include  land  wholly  unsuited  therefor.  The  unnec¬ 
essary  withdrawal  from  sale  and  settlement  of  enormous  tracts 
of  public  land  upon  which  tree  growth  never  existed  and  can 
not  be  promoted  tends  only  to  retard  development,  create  dis¬ 
content  and  bring  reproach  upon  the  policy  of  conservation. 

The  public  land  laws  should  be  administered  in  a  spirit  of 
the  broadest  liberality  towards  the  settler  exhibiting  a  bona  fide 
purpose  to  comply  therewith,  to  the  end  that  the  invitation  of 
this  government  to  the  landless  should  be  as  attractive  as  pos¬ 
sible,  and  the  plain  provisions  of  the  forest  reserve  act  permit¬ 
ting  homestead  entries  to  be  made  within  the  national  forests 
should  not  be  nullified  by  administrative  regulations  which 
amount  to  a  withdrawal  of  great  areas  of  the  same  from  settle¬ 
ment. 

Immediate  action  should  be  taken  by  Congress  to  make 
available  the  vast  and  valuable  coal  deposits  of  Alaska  under 
conditions  that  will  be  a  perfect  guaranty  against  their  falling 
into  the  hands  of  monopolizing  corporations,  associations  or 
interests. 

We  rejoice  in  the  inheritance  of  mineral  resources  unequalled 
in  extent,  variety  or  value,  and  in  the  development  of  a  mining 
industry  unequalled  in  its  magnitude  and  importance.  We  honor 
the  men  who,  in  their  hazardous  toil  under  ground,  daily  risk 
their  lives  in  extracting  and  preparing  for  our  use  the  products 
of  the  mine,  so  essential  to  the  industries,  the  commerce  and 
the  comfort  of  the  people  of  this  country.  And  we  pledge  our¬ 
selves  to  the  extension  of  the  work  of  the  bureau  of  mines  in 
every  way  appropriate  for  national  legislation  with  a  view  of 
safeguarding  the  lives  of  the  miners,  lessening  the  waste  of 
essential  resources,  and  promoting  the  economic  development 
of  mining,  which,  along  with  agriculture,  must  in  the  future, 


.  —  ^  ^  vci_y  iuuiiuarion  oi  our 

national  prosperity  and  welfare  and  our  international  commerce. 


Agriculture. 

We  believe  in  encouraging  the  development  of  a  modern 
system  of  agriculture  and  a  systematic  effort  to  improve  the 
conditions  of  trade  in  farm  products  so  as  to  benefit  both  the 
consumers  and  producers.  And  as  an  efficient  means  to  this 
end  we  favor  the  enactment  by  Congress  of  legislation  that 
will  suppress  the  pernicious  practice  of  gambling  in  agricultural 
products  by  organized  exchanges  or  others. 


Merchant  Marine. 


We  believe  in  fostering,  by  constitutional  regulation  of  com¬ 
merce,  the  growth  of  a  merchant  marine,  which  shall  develop 
and  strengthen  the  commercial  ties  which  bind  us  to  our  sister 
republics  of  the  south,  but  without  imposing  additional  burdens 
upon  the  people  and  without  bounties  or  subsidies  from  the 
public  treasury. 

We  urge  upon  Congress  the  speedy  enactment  of  laws  for 
the  greater  security  of  life  and  property  at  sea  and  we  favor 
the  repeal  of  all  laws,  and  the  abrogation  of  so  much  of  our 
treaties  with  other  nations  as  provide  for  the  arrest  and  impris¬ 
onment  of  seamen  charged  with  desertion,  or  with  violation  of 
their  contract  of  service.  Such  laws  and  treaties  are  un-Ameri¬ 
can  and  violate  the  spirit,  if  not  the  letter,  of  the  constitution 
of  the  United  States. 

We  favor  the  exemption  from  tolls  of  American  ships 
engaged  in  coastwise  trade  passing  through  the  Panama  Canal. 

We  also  favor  legislation  forbidding  the  use  of  the  Panama 
Canal  by  ships  owned  or  controlled  by  railroad  carriers  engaged 
in  transportation  competitive  with  the  canal. 


Pure  Food  Law  and  Public  Health. 

We  reaffirm  our  previous  declarations  advocating  the  union 
and  strengthening  of  the  various  governmental  agencies  relat¬ 
ing  to  pure  foods,  quarantine,  vital  statistics  and  human  health. 
Thus  united,  and  administered  without  partiality  to  or  discrim¬ 
ination  against  any  school  of  medicine  or  system  .of  healing,  they 
would  constitute  a  single  health  service,  not  subordinated  to 
any  commercial  or  financial  interests  but  devoted  exclusively  t© 
the  conservation  of  human  life  and  efficiency.  Moreover,  this 
health  service  should  co-operate  with  the  health  agencies  of  our 
various  states  and  cities,  without  interference  with  their  pre¬ 
rogatives  or  with  the  freedom  of  individuals  to  employ  such 
medical  or  hygienic  aid  as  they  may  see  fit. 


Civil  Service  Law. 


The  law  pertaining  to  the  civil  service  should  be  honestly 
and  rigidly  enforced,  to  the  end  that  merit  and  ability  shall  be 
the  standard  of  appointment  and  promotion,  rather  than  service 
rendered  to  a  political  party;  and  we  favor  a  reorganization  of 
the  civil  service  with  adequate  compensation  commensurate  with 
the  class  of  work  performed  for  all  officers  and  employes;  we 
also  favor  the  extension  to  all  classes  of  civil  service  employes 
of  the  benefits  of  the  provisions  of  the  employers’  liability  law; 
we  also  recognize  the  right  of  direct  petition  to  Congress  by 
employes  for  the  redress  of  grievances. 


Law  Reform. 

We  recognize  the  urgent  need  of  reform  in  the  administra¬ 
tion  of  civil  and  criminal  law  in  the  United  States,  and  we  rec¬ 
ommend  the  enactment  of  such  legislation  and  ‘the  promotion 
of  such  measures  as  will  rid  the  present  legal  system  of  the 


51 

administered”86  “d  UnCerta!nties  inddent  the  system  as  now 
The  Philippines. 

.  reaffirm  the  position  thrice  announced  by  the  Democracy 

in  national  convention  assembled  against  a  policy  of  imperialism 
and  colonial  exploitation  in  the  Philippines  or  elsewhere.  We 
condemn  the  experiment  in  imperialism  as  an  inexcusable 
blunder  which  has  involved  us  in  enormous  expense,  brought  us 
weakness  instead  of  strength,  and  laid  our  nation  open  to  the 
charge  of  abandonment  of  the  fundamental  doctrine  of  self- 
government.  We  favor  an  immediate  declaration  of  the  nation's 
purpose  to  recognize  the  independence  of  the  Philippine  Islands 
as  soon  as  a  stable  government  can  be  established,  such  inde¬ 
pendence  to  be  guaranteed  by  us  until  the  neutralization  of  the 
islands  can  be  secured  by  treaty  with  other  powers.  In  recog- 
mzmg  the  independence  of  the  Philippines,  our  government 
would  retain  such  land  as  may  be  necessary  for  coaling  sta¬ 
tions  and  naval  bases. 

Arizona  and  New  Mexico. 

We  welcome  Arizona  and  New  Mexico  to  the  sisterhood  of 
states  and  heartily  congratulate  them  upon  their  auspicious 
beginning  of  great  and  glorious  careers. 

Alaska. 

the^lhdranad  f°r  Mhe  pe°?le  of  Alaska  the  fuI1  enjoyment  of 
the  rights  and  privileges  of  a  territorial  form  of  government 

and  we  believe  that  the  officials  appointed  to'  administer  the 

°r?  jT  territones  and  the  District  of  Columbia 
should  be  qualified  by  previous  bona  fide  residence. 

The  Russian  Treaty. 

the'senhtrfndndwthe  pat(ri°tism  of  the  Democratic  members  of 
the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  which  compelled  the 

termination  of  the  Russian  treaty  of  1832,  and  we  pledge  our- 

sh i o'a t  home ' °  FT™,  th£  Sacred  ri^hts  of  American  citizen- 
sffip  at  home  and  abroad  No  treaty  should  receive  the  sanction 

our  government  which  does  not  recognize  that  equality  of 
our  citizens,  irrespective  of  race  or  creed,  which  does  not 
expressly  guarantee  the  fundamental  right  of  expatriation. 

The  constitutional  rights  of  American  citizens  should  protect 
them  on  our  borders  and  go  with  them  throughout  the^orld 
and  every  American  citizen  residing  or  having  property  in  any 
foreign  country  is  entitled  to  and  must  be  given,  the  fuU  protec- 

property  eS  government'  b°*  for  himself  and  his 

Parcels  Post  and  Rural  Delivery. 

We  favor  the  establishment  of  a  parcels  post  or  postal 
express,  and  also  the  extension  of  the  rural  delivery  system  as 
rapidly  as  practicable.  y  system  as 

Panama  Canal  Exposition. 

We  hereby  express  our  deep  interest  in  the  great  Panama 
Canal  exposition  to  be  held  in  San  Francisco  in  1915  and  W 
such  encouragement  as  can  be  properly  given. 

Protection  of  National  Uniform. 

We  commend  to  the  several  states  the  adontinn  „  , 
making  it  an  offense  for  the  proprietors  of  places  of  oubh^ 
amusement  and  entertainment  to  discriminate  against  [he  uni- 


52 


form  of  the  United  States,  similar  to  the  law  passed  by  Congres* 
applicable  to  the  District  of  Columbia  and  the  territories  in  1911. 

Pensions. 

We  renew  the  declaration  of  our  last  platform  relating  to  ft 
generous  pension  policy. 

Rule  of  the  People. 

We  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  Democratic  party’s 
demand  for  a  return  to  the  rule  of  the  people  expressed  in  the 
national  platform  four  years  ago  has  now  become  the  accepted 
doctrine  of  a  large  majority  of  the  electors.  We  again  remind 
the  country  that  only  by  a  larger  exercise  of  the  reserved 
power  of  the  people  can  they  protect  themselves  from  the  mis¬ 
use  of  delegated  power  and  the  usurpation  of  governmental 
instrumentalities  by  special  interests.  For  this  reason,  the 
national  convention  insisted  on  the  overthrow  of  Cannomsm 
and  the  inauguration  of  a  system  by  which  United  States  Sen¬ 
ators  could  be  elected  by  direct  vote.  The  Democratic  party 
offers  itself  to  the  country  as  an  agency  through  which  the 
complete  overthrow  and  extirpation  of  corruption,  fraud  and 
machine  rule  in  American  politics  can  be  effected. 

Conclusion. 

Our  platform  is  one  of  principles  which  we  believe  to  be 
essential  to  our  national  welfare.  Our  pledges  are  made  to  be 
kept  when  in  office  as  well  as  relied  upon  during  the  campaign 
and  we  invite  the  co-operation  of  all  citizens,  regardless  of 
party,  who  believe  in  maintaining  unimpaired  the  institutions 
and  traditions  of  our  country. 

Schedule. 


Following  is  a  schedule  of  the  various  subjects,  and  their 
arrangement:  Introductory,  tariff  reform,  high  cost  of  living, 
anti-trust  law,  rights  of  states,  income  tax  and  popular  elec¬ 
tion  of  senators,  presidential  primaries,  campaign  contributions, 
law  reform,  the  Philippines,  Arizona  and  New  Mexico,  Alaska, 
Russian  treaty,  parcels  post  and  rural,  delivery,  San  Francisco 
exposition,  protection  of  uniform,  pensions,  rule  of  people,  term 
of  president,  Democratic  Congress,  Republican  extravagance, 
railroads,  express,  telegraph  and  telephone  lines,  banking  legis¬ 
lation,  rural  credits,  waterways,  post  roads,  rights  of  labor, 
conservation,  agriculture,  merchant  marine,  pure  food  law,  civil 
service  law. 


(b)  BRIEF  HISTORY  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  PARTY. 

(Taken  from  “Business,”  by  Charles  Edward  Russell.) 

If  the  early  history  of  the  Republican  party  was  glorious, 
what  shall  we  say  of  the  early  history  of  the  Democratic  party. 

The  Republican  party  saved  the  republic,  the  Democrat 

party  made  it.  , 

Who  ponders  now  the  grimy  fact  that  Alexander  Hamilton  s 
pet  and  insistent  project  was  to  have  a  king  in  the 
Yet  so  stands  the  record  as  plain  as  day.  Or  who  reflects  that, 
when  because  of  the  steady  fighting  of  Thomas  Jefferson  and 
his  friends,  Hamilton  and  his  assistants  failed  to  secure  a  mon¬ 
archy  in  name,  they  bent  all  their  energies  to  establish  one  m 
fact?  Yet  this,  too,  is  writ  large  in  our  story;  and  out  of  the 
conflict  between  the  autocratic  creed  of  Hamilton  and  the 
Republican  faith  of  Jefferson  sprang  up  the  Federalist  party  on 
one  side  and  the  Democratic  party  on  the  other 

Both  the  evil  and  the  good  that  men  do  live  after  them.  We 


53 


have  in  our  system  of  government  little  enough  of  true  democ¬ 
racy,  little  enough  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  the  people’* 
will.  What  little  we  have  we  owe  chiefly  to  Jefferson  and  his 
fellow  Democrats;  what  checks  and  obstructions  and  anarchism 
in  our  system  survive  to  clog  and  curse  us  we  owe  to  Hamilton 
and  his  fellow  Federalists  triumphing  over  Jefferson’s  clear 
vision  and  unawed  mind. 

Upon  the  rock  of  this  creed  the  Democratic  party  was 
formed — the  broad  faith  in  m^n,  the  broadest  sympathy  with 
man’s  cause.  Jefferson  was  the  first  advocate  of  a  genuine  and 
practical  democracy,  the  first  actual  champion  of  popular  gov¬ 
ernment,  the  first  man  that,  clearly  recognizing  the  caste  feeling 
as  selfishness  and  ignorant  vanity,  banished  it  from  his  heart 
and  knew  that  for  the  guidance  of  the  state  there  was  no  wis¬ 
dom  but  the  collective  wisdom  of  the  community.  ...  It 
was  by  the  narrowest  margin  that  the  party  of  Thomas  Jef¬ 
ferson’s  founding  (called  then  the  Democratic-Republican  party) 
won  its  first  electoral  victory  in  1800,  and  turned  out  the  Fed¬ 
eralist,  John  Adams.  In  the  one  hundred  and  ten  years  that 
have  followed  there  have  been  twenty-seven  Presidential  elec¬ 
tions,  of  which  the  Democratic  party  has  won  thirteen.  No 
other  party  in  the  political  history  of  the  world  has  lasted  so 
long  or  triumphed  so  often.  Up  to  and  including  the  year  1856 
of  the  fifteen  elections  since  its  founding  the  Democratic  party 
has  won  all  but  three. 

For  the  next  twelve  years  after  1824,  having  first  Jackson 
and  then  Van  Buren  in  the  Presidency  and  a  plurality  in  Cong¬ 
ress,  the  Democratic  party  ruled  the  country  with  unquestioned 
sway. 

Slave  Owning  Interests  Enter. 

But  meantime  very  great  changes,  some  of  them  subtly  made, 
swept  over  our  political  system.  The  introduction  of  the  cot¬ 
ton  gin  and  of  steam  machinery,  having  made  cotton  the  great¬ 
est  of  our  products,  enormously  developed  slave-owning,  slave- 
labor  and  slave-made  wealth.  Wealth,  as  always,  spelled  Power, 
and  Power,  as  always,  sought  Government,  that  it  might  make 
more  wealth.  Slave-owning  was  quickly  erected  into  a  great, 
dominant,  menacing  Interest,  able  to  influence  elections  and  to 
make  or  mar  careers,  and  before  that  Interest  the  Democratic 
party  bowed  itself  for  the  sake  of  success.  It  had  gone,  indeed 
the  inevitable  path. 

.  At  first>  as  always  happens  in  these  cases,  all  went  exceed¬ 
ingly  well.  The  earliest  explicit  surrender  to  the  Interests  was 
contained  in  the  party  platform  of  1840,  adopted  at  Baltimore, 
in  which  one  plank  opposed  interference  with  states’  rights,  and 
another  condemned  the  efforts  of  Abolitionists  to  secure  national 
legislation  curbing  the  slave  power.  “Interference  with  states* 
rights”  meant  the  appearance  of  some  hesitation  on  the  part 
of  Northern  courts  and  Northern  officers  to  return  slaves  cap¬ 
tured  in  flight;  and  on  this  point  also  the  declaration  was 
dictated  by  the  slave  owners.  .  .  . 

Slave  Owners  in  Full  Control. 

After  this  notable  victory  (1844)  the  Interests  rioted  in  the 
absolute  possession  of  the  Democratic  party  (which  controlled 
the  government),  and  each  succeeding  year  saw  their  increas¬ 
ing  arrogance,  until  no  politician,  North  or  South,  dared  to 
oppose  them.  Into  the  next  Democratic  platform  they  wrote 
some  resounding  platitudes  of  good  government,  but  the  sense 
of  the  'instrument  was  a  defiance  of  any  attempt  to  coerce  the 
slave-power.  .  .  . 

And  the  interests,  heeding  no  sign,  walked  their  own  road 
whither  that  led.  They  dealt  out  political  ruin  to  any  man  that 


opposed  them;  they  mobbed  and  murdered,  they  shot  and  blud¬ 
geoned,  they  scorned  and  mocked,  they  clung  to  their  privileges 
in  spite  of  every  warning  and  at  last  they  hanged  John  Brown. 

And  then  the  manhood  of  the  North  awoke  and  down  went 
slavery  and  with  it  the  party  of  Jefferson — that  had  bartered 
away  the  ark  of  the  Jeffersonian  Covenant. 


After  the  Civil  War. 

Chiefly  to  Mr.  Tilden  fell  the  monumental  task  of  bringing 
the  party  from  so  far  afield  back  to  the  original  faith. 

Mr.  Tilden  prepared  for  the  Democratic  National  Convention  of 
1876  a  declaration  of  principles  that  might  have  emanated  from 
Jefferson  himself.  With  the  broad  doctrine  of  faith  in  popular 
government  was  combined  an  attack  on  the  waxing  Tariff 
Privilege;  and  the  result  was  Mr.  Tilden’s  triumphant  success 
at  the  polls.  He  was  defrauded  of  his  victory  by  a  villainy  so 
gross  and  a  crime  against  the  republic  so  huge  that  it  broke 
Mr.  Tilden’s  spirit  and  shortened  his  life. 

Thereupon  folly,  led  by  Tammany  Hall,  which  hated  Tilden 
and  all  his  kind,  returned  to  its  throne  upon  the  Democratic 
mind. 

Democratic  Party  for  Protective  Tariff. 

In  congressional  elections  of  1882  the  Democrats  over¬ 
whelmingly  swept  the  country.  All  signs  pointing  to  the  im¬ 
minent  danger  of  Democratic  success  in  the  Presidential  cam¬ 
paign  of  1884,  the  manufacturing  interests  early  turned  their 
attention  to  the  Democrats,  captured  certain  leaders,  wrote  the 
platform  to  suit  themselves,  made  for  it  a  tariff  plank  that 
(reversing  the  uniform  party  policy)  declared  for  protection, 
and  having  secured  themselves  against  any  contingency,  let  the 
election  take  care  of  itself;  and  the  Democrats  won  (electing 
Grover  Cleveland). 


I  do  not  know  that  anybody  ever  understood  Grover  Cleve¬ 
land;  it  is  charitable  to  believe  that  he  did  not  understand 
himself.  Certainly  he  must  have  known  that  the  newly  arisen 
and  most  dangerous  Interests,  the  Morgan  and  Sugar  Trust 
and  great  Banking  Interests,  were  actively  battling  for  him  in 
the  campaign.  Yet,  having  been  elected  on  the  most  emphatic 
promises  of  tariff  reform,  his  first  act  as  President  was  to 
ignore  the  tariff  issue  and  summon  a  special  session  of  Congress 
to  tinker  tl^e  currency  according  to  will  of  the  Interests  that  had 
supported  him,  although  the  currency  had  not  been  at  any  time 
an  issue  in  the  campaign.  .  .  .  His  inaugural  address 

resounded  with  eloquence  in  favor  of  the  people  and  popular 
government.  Yet  very  early  he  betrayed  the  people  into  the 
hands  of  their  enemy  by  issuing  the  bonds  demanded  by  a 
banking  syndicate  composed  of  his  supporters.  I  think,  in 
fact,  his  was  the  club  that  inflicted  upon  the  Democratic  party 
the  incurable  hurt. 

At  this  undeniable  proof  of  a  monstrous  fraud  the  country 
was  filled  \yith  measureless  disgust.  Few  were  so  blind  as  not 
to  recognize  the  signs  of  a  faqiiliar  handiwork.  The  Interests 
had  controlled  a  Democratic  administration  as  absolutely  as  ! 
they  had  ever  controlled  a  Republican  administration.  A  hasty 
and  futile  attempt  was  made  to  muzzle  the  next  Democratic  , 
National  Convention.  The  outraged  public  feeling  was  too  , 
strong  to  be  checked.  With  tremendous  enthusiasm  the  con-  | 
vention  adopted  a  program  utterly  and  radically  hostile  to  the 


55 


banking-  interests  and  nominated  the  candidate  that  a 

most  forcibly  to  express  their  hostility  Seemed 

Bryan’s  Vacillating  Course. 

1RQ^r'  Bryaf’ ,Unfa1irly’  dishonestly  and  fraudulently  beaten  in 

h?9]6K9fir°Ceeded  t°  j631  hlmself  and  his  party  in  1900.  He  had 
m  1896  a  great  fundamental  issue  based  upon  the  eternal  cause 

a  taTupon6  the  ^  3  half-hearted  a*d  ba^^anaged 

warfheUP:anst1h.atPasMT?:r  Z&  aft“- 

untd  thinking  men  are  compelled  to  doubt  his  sincerity^  any 
position  he  seemed  for  the  moment  to  occupy  7  y 

But  it  made  no  difference.  The  downfall  of  the  party  im 
fherenff  ""  Cleveland's  time,  was  completed  in  1904: 
white fter  Whatei!er  ,battenes  might  be  applied  to  its  feet  or 
whatever  eager  hands  might  institute  artificial  respiration  ’the 

helf^atal  wLk  ThT^^  Vj,taIity;  The  Interests  had  do”e 

attendant3  tranSaCtl.°n  WaS  top  duI1  be  at  large  without  an 

Plutocracy  in  Full  Control. 

Sr  ^ 

great  predatory  combination  o^thTunTeT’s^t^Tr^ctkany 

Homyitseast'anI  had  representatives  Sted 

and  legislative  LrlZ  "‘“T  bribers’  *”ers , 

hadhseeHedatthOenv(1908)  WaS  Very  P’ain;  the  great  corporations 
laws  InlMfieH  g°vernment-  controlled  legislation,  violated  the 
laws,  nullified  prosecution,  largely  controlled  the  press  and 

ueprtetheaScto0u°r“UChTrern  ‘°  thi”k.h.ad  at  •>««" To  cor- 

T  h,s  acute  cnsls’  n°t  less  serious  than 
the  situation  once  created  by  negro  slavery,  Mr.  Bryan  and  the 

°  1C  party .proposed  in  copy-book  axioms  to  apply  some 

vague  remedy  of  good-will  or  honest  purpose.  Four  yeZl 
^  -  .tb,S  SamKe..  Democratic  party  had  been  notoriously  the 

it  Silhh  nUr.IC  enemlef-  and  Mr-  Bryan  had  then  supported 
'L  ,Sdch  credulity  as  would  believe  that  in  four  years  he  and 
d  had  undergone  any  miraculous  conversion  would  accept 
Mother  Goose  for  scientific  research.  ...  P 

Not  being  fools  the  American  people  saw  through  all  this. 
They  were  presented  with  the  choice  between  two  parties,  each 
d  absolutely  by  the  corporation  Interests.  Without  enthus- 
asm  but  with  eminent  good  sense,  they  chose  the  party  that 
*as  the  most  presentable  and  emitted  the  least  odor.  When 
t  comes  to  choosing  between  the  Cannons  and  Aldriches  on 
)ne  side  and  on  the  other  the  men  that  make  a  loud  and  unsub¬ 
stantial  pretense  of  serving  the  popular  cause,  the  people  will 
ilways  be  likely  to  choose  the  Cannons  and  the  Aldriches. 

Ihe  Republican  party  renewed  its  lease  upon  the  govern- 
nent  functions  and  the  Interests  were  for  the  time  being 
•ecure.  In  their  hour  of  triumph  they  outstepped  discretion, 
nade  up  a  cabinet  of  their  representatives,  seized  the  water 
lowers  of  public  domain,  dictated  the  tariff  bill,  openly  planned 
o  grab  Alaska  and  advertised  to  the  world  that  they  were 
■upreme.  Therefore  in  the  Congressional  election  of  1910  the 
>eople  wearily  and  perfunctorily  turned  out  a  Republican  major- 


56 


\S?  * 

ity  of  the  House  and,  seeing  nothing  else  to  do,  turned  in  a 
Democratic. 

That  they  will  continue  to  turn  from  one  to  the  other  of 
two  parties  each  equally  owned  by  the  Interests  is  inconceiv¬ 
able.  Let  us  suppose  the  election  of  1910  to  foreshadow  a 
Democratic  victory  in  1912.  Within  fourteen  months  there¬ 
after  the  real  ownership  of  the  Democratic  party  will  be  plainly 
revealed  to  be  these  same  Interests  upon  which  the  people  have 
declared  war.  Is  it  not  clear,  then,  that  we  shall  see  at  that 
time  in  politics  some  convulsions  the  like  of  which  have  not 
been  witnessed  for  more  than  a  generation? 

(c)  COMMENTS  ON  THE  DEMOCRATIC  RECORD. 

(From  “The  Democratic  Party/'  by  Ralph  Korngold.) 

The  Democratic  party  has  announced  that  it  is  the  party  of 
the  Common  People. 

Let  us  examine  this  party  of  the  Common  People. 

A  tree,  we  are  told,  is  known  by  its  fruits.  We  shall  ex¬ 
amine  the  fruit  that  we  may  know  the  tree. 

The  Democratic  party,  for  more  than  one  hundred  years, 
with  the  exception  of  the  few  years  of  the  Reconstruction 
Period,  has  been  in  complete  control  of  what  is  known  as  the 
Solid  South. 

Some  time  ago  the  governor  of  one  of  the  southern  states 
boasted  that  his  state  was  “Democratic  from  stem  to  stern, 
from  governor  to  constable.”  The  same  might  be  said  of  nearly 
all  of  the  southern  states. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  there  has  ever  been  a  political  party 
anywhere  which  has  had  such  an  opportunity  to  show  what  it 
could  do  and  was  willing  to  do  for  the  Common  People. 

What  are  the  fruits  of  the  Democratic  regime  in  the  Solid 
South? 

Child  Labor. 

Nowhere  else  in  the  United  States  are  children  of  such, 
tender  years  ground  into  profits  for  the  capitalist  class  as  in! 
the  Solid  South.  It  is  not  uncommon  to  see  children  six  andi 
seven  years  old  trudging  to  the  cotton  mill  at  half  past  four  in 
the  morning,  to  remain  at  work  twelve  hours  and  even  longer, 
for  the  pitiful  wage  of  from  ten  to  twenty  cents  a  day. 

There  are  nearly  one  hundred  thousand  child  slaves,  both 
black  and  white,  in  the  Solid  South,  and  the  Democratic  party 
has  done  nothing  or  practically  nothing  to  protect  them.  Child 
labor  legislation  is  almost  unknown  in  the  southern  states,  and 
unscrupulous  Northern  manufacturers  are  moving  their  mills 
into  the  South  because  under  the  Democratic  regime  they  are 
able  to  employ  children  without  any  interference  from  the 
child  labor  inspector. 

Peonage. 

Peonage,  the  enforced  detention  of  workingmen,  flourishes 
in  the  southern  states.  The  records  of  the  Department  of 
Justice  show  that  peonage  is  not  only  connived  at,  but  is  act¬ 
ually  aided  by  the  Democratic  administrations  in  the  interests 
of  the  turpentine  and  lumber  companies. 

Vagrancy  Laws. 

If  a  workingman  is  out  of  a  job  in  the  Solid  South,  the  Demo¬ 
cratic  administration  will  furnish  him  employment.  They  will 
arrest  him  under  the  vagrancy  law,  put  a  ball  and  chain  on  his, 
feet  and  set  him  to  work  on  the  public  roads.  If  he  does  not 


87 

work  hard  enough  he  will  get  thirty-nine  lashes  across  hi* 
bare  back.  * 

Sometimes  the  workingman  is  fined  and  delivered  into  the 
land.  The  condition  of  these  renters  is  inferior  to  that  of 
contractor  paying  the  county  for  the  man’s  services.  During 
hands  of  a  contractor  or  capitalist  to  work  out  his  fine,  the 
the  entire  period  of  his  enforced  labor  the  prisoner  is  under 
strict  surveillance  and  may  be  shot  by  the  contractor  if  he 
attempts  to  escape. 

It  is  well  known  that  in  many  instances  the  Democratic 
county  administrations  are  in  league  with  the  contractors  whom 
they  supply  with  cheap  labor  in  this  manner. 

Unjust  Election  Laws. 

By  means  of  the  poll  tax,  “the  grandfather  clause,”  and 
other  schemes,  the  Democratic  party  of  the  South  has  disfran¬ 
chised  nearly  all  of  the  negro  workingmen  and  many  of  the 
white  workingmen. 

Landlordism. 

Under  the  perpetual  rule  of  the  Democratic  party  in  the 
South  and  Southwest  the  public  domain  has  been  wasted  and 
a  landlordism  has-  grown  up  such  as  can  be  found  nowhere  else 
m  the  United  States.  In  some  sections  of  the  South  and  South¬ 
west  it  is  very  unusual  to  find  a  farmer  who  owns  his  own 
the  most  poorly  paid  workingman  in  the  North. 

Usury. 

The  banking  laws  in  many  of  the  southern  states  are  so 
constructed  as  to  make  it  possible  for  the  banker  to  charge 
from  25  to  150  per  cent,  on  short-time  loans.  This  is  especially 
true  of  the  state  of  Oklahoma,  which  boasts  of  being  one  of 
the  most  “progressive”  of  the  block  of  southern  states. 

Antagonism  to  Labor  Unions. 

When  some  time  ago  the  miners  went  out  on  a  strike  in 
the  state  of  Alabama  and  were  evicted  from  the  company 
louses,  the  United  Mine  Workers  sent  tents  to  these  unfort¬ 
unate  people  so  that  they,  their  wives  and  their  children  might 
ie  sheltered  from  the  rainy  weather.  The  governor  of  the 
state  of  Alabama  ordered  the  soldiers  to  burn  down  the  tents 
f  the  miners  attempted  to  put  them  up. 

By  skillfully  balancing  the  white  man  against  the  negro  and 
rostering  race  hatred,  the  Democratic  politicians  have  been 
ible  to  prevent  the  formation  of  active  and  strong  labor  unions 
n  the  South.  As  a  result  of  this  the  wages  for  all  kinds  of 
abor  are  lower  in  the  South  than  they  are  in  the  northern 
itates. 


The  Democratic  Party  in  the  North. 

In  the  North  the  Democratic  party  has  been  the  party  of 
he  public  service  corporations.  It  has  maintained  itself  in 
’ower  m  cities  like  Chicago,  New  York,  St.  Louis,  and  other 
arge  centers  of  population,  by  an  open  alliance  with  the  red 
ight  district  and  the  slum. 

The  names  of  Roger  Sullivan,  who  holds  the  Democratic 
arty  of  Illinois  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand,  Tom  Taggart,  who 
ontrols  the  Democracy  of  Indiana,  and  Charles  Murphy,  who 
erforms  the  same  function  in  New  York,  have  become  by¬ 
words  for  all  that  is  crooked  and  corrupt  in  American  politics. 

(d)  DEMOCRATS  DISFRANCHISE  WORKINGMEN. 


Artide  XIV.  The  right  of  any  resident  of  the  United  States 
o  vote  shall  not  be  denied  or  abridged  by  the  United  States  or 
•y  any  state  on  account  of  sex,  race,  color,  lack  of  property 


58 


-Constitution  of  the  United 


or  failure  to  pay  taxes  of  any  kind.- 
States. 

To  what  extent  workingmen,  both  black  and  white,  are  dis- 
ranchised  in  the  southern  states  can  be  seen  by  the  following- 
In  some  states  not  even  one-third  of  the  native  white  males 
of  voting  age  cast  their  ballots.  Take  South  Carolina,  for 
instance.  There  are  335,046  males  of  voting  age  in  that  state 

S'::  0™  I69;?5S  ‘his  number.  They  gcan  at  once  be 
eliminated,  since  they  are  not  permitted  even  to  look  cross- 

IndVw  ^  ?t  bhX'  BUti  there  are  162,414  native  white  males 
and  3,355  foreign-born  males  of  voting  age  in  that  state.  How 

many  of  these  do  you  suppose  share  in  the  “white  man’s  gov¬ 
ernment  ?  Two-thirds,  perhaps?  No.  One-half,  then?  No 
Surely  one-third,  though?  Not  even  that.  The  recent  vote  lor 
Presidential  electors  was  50,348,  just  31  per  cent,  of  the  total 

malestlVe  Wh‘te  ^  ^  a“d  leSS  than  3°  per  Cent'  of  a11  white 

The  proportion  is  considerably  better  than  that  in  some  other 
of  the  southern  states,  fti  Mississippi,  however,  it  is  about  the 
same.  There  the  vote  is  34.44  per  cent,  of  the  native  white 
males.  In  Georgia  it  is  35.19  per  cent.,  and  in  Louisiana  it  is 
o7.21  per  cent.  In  Texas  it  climbs  to  41.49  per  cent. 

The  number  of  foreign-born  is  in  most  southern  states  too 
5mall  a  factor  to  have  much  effect  on  the  percentage  of  voters 
to  men  of  voting  age.  Let  us  take,  then,  for  comparison,  a 
northern  state  in  which  the  number  of  foreign-born  is  pro¬ 
portionately  small.  Indiana  is  such  a  state.  There  are  712  504 
native  white  males,  88,927  foreign-born  males,  and  20,651  negro 

654  447  3  m  voting  age.  The  recent  vote  in  Indiana  was 
654,447,  or  91.85  per  cent,  of  the  number  of  native  white  males 
Assuming  that  three-fourths  of  the  negroes  had  the  proper 
residence  qualifications,  and  that  one-half  of  the  foreigners  were 
naturalized  and  also  were  qualified  by  residence,  the  proportion 
ot  voters  to  persons  ordinarily  qualified  to  vote  would  be  84  72 
per  cent. 


In  Ohio  the  figures  are  somewhat  similar,  though  a  larger 
formgn  population  reduces  the  percentage.  The  comparison 
shows  that  throughout  the  southern  states  there  must  be  some 
powerful  agencies  at  work  to  keep  not  only  negroes,  but  poor 
white  men,  from  the  polls.  Indifference  counts  for  something, 
tio  doubt;  but  mere  indifference  cannot  count  for  the  dis- 
franchisement  of  from  50  to  70  per  cent,  of  the  white  voters. 

The  apostles  of  southern  “democracy”  don’t  want  the  poor 
white  man  to  vote.  So  they  surround  the  ballot  box  with 
certain  “safeguards.”  Prime  among  these  safeguards  is  the 
poll  tax. 

LOUISIANA — Poll  tax  must  be  paid  to  date  by  December 
31  of  each  year  for  two  years  preceding  the  year  in  which  the 
citizen  offers  to  vote.  So  that  if  he  wanted  to  vote  for  Presi¬ 
dent  in  1912,  he  would  have  had  to  make  up  his  mind  to  that 
effect  in  December,  1910,  to  have  then  paid  his  poll  tax  and 
again  have  paid  the  tax  before  December  31,  1911.  He  must  i 
also  have  resided  in  the  state  for  two  years. 

TEXAS— Unless  he  belongs  to  the  exempt  class,  he  must  | 
have  paid  his  poll  tax  (high  one,  too)  in  the  spring  preceding  ! 
the  election. 

MISSISSIPPI — He  must  have  paid  his  tax  and  must  also  I 
have  lived  in  the  State  two  years  and  (unless  he  happens  to  be  | 
a  clergyman)  in  the  precinct  one  year. 

GEORGIA— He  must  have  paid  all  his  taxes  since  1877. 

SOUTH  CAROLINA — He  must  have  resided  two  years,  j 
paid  his  poll  tax  six  months  before  election,  and  all  taxes  of  ij 
the  previous  year  on  property  assessed  at  $300  or  more. 


59 

VIRGINIA— The  would-be  voter  must  have  paid  his  tare 

Othe1 rresCe  e  years  at  least  six  “°nths  before  election 

Arkansas  FWidT  M®*6-  ^V'-ng  a  po11  tax  law’  are  Alabama! 
Arkansas,  Florida  Mississippi  and  Tennessee 

SsesSpT?nl8°90thern  St3teS  HaVe  disfra“chised  negro: 
Louisiana  in  1898. 

Alabama  in  1901. 

South  Carolina  in  1895. 

North  Carolina  in  1900. 

Georgia  in  1908. 

Oklahoma  in  1910. 

(e)  THE' DEMOCRATS  AND  WOMAN  SUFFRAGE. 

.  (From  The  Chicago  Tribune,  Feb.  5,  1914) 

o  a  •  s  i>[are,  not  a  national  question 

opposed  tSP£T Pany  “ 

.  Th' -suffragists,  however,  will  continue  their  efforts  to  obtain 

“ 

wora  to  the  4,000,000  women  voters  in  the  United  States  fw 

— than  **  Skrc 

Democratic  Vote  Against  Woman  Suffrage  in  Illinois 

eneral  Assembly  on  the  Woman  Suffrage  bill,  was  as  follows- 
Senate  . ^  suffrage.  Against  Suffrage.  Not  voting! 

Hous«  . !  .  24  44  5 

The  Black  Belt. 

A(madnt0rfia.1i,iniirhe  fl'0380  Tribune,  March  20,  1914.) 
whit  tb  f  the„United  States.  Showing  the  suffrage  states  in 
r  ’  theun°-SUffrage  States  in  Mack,  aad  the  partial  suffrage 
tates  With  dotted  or  shaded  lines,  reveals  the^outheast  sea¬ 
board  and  its  hinterland  in  solid  black.  uutneast  sea 

,S”  -‘be  “solid  south."  It  was  the  land  of  slavery  It 

'andidate  il  iesrethWTea  hfave  v°te  upon  any  question  or 
abor  1  h  and  °f  chlvalry-  Jt  'S  the  land  of  child 

On  the  suffrage  map  it  is  our  darkest  America  Mission 

sth\aDe^r:dtict0SoWu0trhk)in  the  S0Uth'  (A”d>  we  might  add,  i! 


60 


<0  THE  DEMOCRATIC  PARTY  AND  THE  HIGH  COST 
OF  LIVING. 

In  Spite  of  the  Democrats  the  Cost  of  Living  Goes  Up. 

{From  Bulletin  No.  136,  page  11,  of  the  United  States  Depart¬ 
ment  of  Labor.) 


Considering  prices  in  the  United  States  as.  a  whole,  the 
simple  average  of  the  relative  prices  of  15  principal  articles  of 
food  shows  the  following: 

Jan  15,  1913,  compared  with  Jan.  15,  1912.  .3.8  per  cent  advance. 
Feb.  15,  1913,  compared  with  Feb.  15,  1912.  .3.8  per  cent  advance. 
Mar.  15,  1913,  compared  with  Mar.  15,  1912.  .6.0  per  cent  advance. 
Apr  15,  1913,  compared  with  Apr.  15,  1912.  .3.9  per  cent  advance. 
May  15,  1913,  compared  with  May  15,  1912.  .2.0  per  cent  advance. 
June  15, 1913,  compared  with  June  15, 1912.  .3.9  per  cent  advance. 
July  15,  1913,  compared  with  July  15,  1912.  .8.2  per  cent  advance. 
Aug.  15,  1913,  compared  with  Aug.  15,  1912.  .8.6  per  cent  advance. 

When  the  relative  prices  are  weighted  according  to  the  aver¬ 
age  consumption  of  the  various  articles  of  food  in  workingmen’s 
families  the  changes  in  prices  within  a  year  were  as  follows: 
Jan.  15,  1913,  compared  with  Jan.  15,  1912.  .2.9  per  cent  advance. 
Feb  15,  1913,  compared  with  Feb.  15,  1912.  .3.2  per  cent  advance. 
Mar  15,  1913,  compared  with  Mar.  15,  1912.  .6.2  per  cent  advance. 
Apr.  15,  1913,  compared  with  Apr.  15,  1912..  4.1  per  cent  advance. 
May  15  1913,  compared  with  May  15,  1912. .  1.7  per  cent  advance. 
June  15  1913,  compared  with  June  15,  1912.  .3.3  per  cent  advance. 
July  15  1913,  compared  with  July  15,  1912.  .7.8  per  cent  advance. 
Aug.  15,  1913,  compared  with  Aug.  15,  1912.  .8.0  per  cent  advance. 

An  Interview  With  Underwood. 


(Allan  L.  Benson  in  Pearson’s  Magaxine,  January,  191' *•) 

T  first  told  Mr.  Underwood  that  I  understood  that  his  new 
tariff  law  was  To  bring  about  a  great  reduction  in  the  cost  of 
living  I  had  understood  no  such  thing  from  any.,  res1?°^3^? 
nJrson  but  I  simply  thought  I  would  throw  out  the  line  and 
LehoW  far  he  would  go  with  it.  He  did  not  go  far.  ^  As  corn - 
nared  with  the  old  “Empty  Market  Basket  brigade  he  hardly 
moved  He  said  the  new  law  would  reduce  the  cost  of  living  * 
srood  deal  ”  I  asked  him  what  he  meant  by  a  good  deal.  He  j 
ffi  not  care  to  say.  I  did  care  to  have  him  say.  I  pressed  him 
?o  b2  more  nearly  definite.  He  said  he  could  not  be  more  nearly 
K«rSt2-t£iLt  he  could  not  speak  in  terms  of  money  because  one  } 
family  might  save  one  sum  and  another  family  a  different  sum, 
depending  upon  their  respective  manners  of  living.  1 
sweep  away  this  defense  by  asking  him  to  estimate  in  dollars  the 
amount  that  would  be  saved  annually  by  the  average  American 
wage-worker’s  family,  whose  income  is  about  $500  a  year. 

Mr  Underwood  would  not  answer.  He  would  like  to  answer  me 
— he  assured  me  so.  But  he  could  not  even  approximately  answer 
such  a  question  unless  he  were  to  make  a  _care*ul  calculation 
covering** the  amounts  of  food  and  the  kinds  of  food,  the  amounts 
of  clothing  and  the  kinds  of  clothing  that  are  consumed  by 
average  American  families,  and  then  figuring  up  the  saving  on 
the  basis  of  the  new  law  in  comparison  with  the  old.  I  told 
him  that  I  did  not  seek  exact  figures,  which  nobody  could  give 
after  any  amount  of  calculation,  but  approximate  figures.  I 
sought  to  help  him  along  by  asking  what  would  be  the  annutl 
saving  on  $375  a  year  spent  for  food  and  clothing,  that  being 
ibouf  the  sum  that  $500  a  year  families  have  after  paying  their 
house  rent*.  Still  he  sat  in  his  chair  and  gave  me  the  wise 
statesman  look  combined  with  silence.  ,  ,  .  .  - 

Then  I  tried  him  with  a  different  hook.  I  asked  him  if  he  be¬ 
lieved  an  annual  saving  of  $25  would  seem  a  good  deal  to  a 

family  in  receipt  of  $500  a  year.  He  said  he  did.  I  then  asked 

him  if,  in  asserting  that  the  new  tariff  would  reduce  the  cost 
of  living  “a  good  deal,”  it  would  be  just  to  understand  him  as 
meaning  a  saving  of  approximately  $25  a  year.  But  he  said  he 
did  not  want  to  be  quoted  at  all  in  terms  of  money  I  should 
have  been  *rlad  to  carry  the  grand  news  that,  having  won  a 
great  victory  at  the  polls  in  1012,  each  poor  American  family 
might  expect  to  have  the  cost  of  living  reduced  almost  50  cents 
*  week,  but  I  could  get  no  Underwood  authority  for  It. 

t _ nivior  nViaioos  <vf  Hip  same  sublect 


’■eek,  but  I  could  get  no  Underwood  autnomy  ior  k. 

So  I  passed  on  to  other  phases  of  the  same  subject.  I  asked 
him  upon  what  articles  this  possible  saving  of  50  cents  a  week 
might  be  expected.  I  shall  never  forget  his  answer.  He  said. 
“The  cost  of  vegetables  along  the  Canadian  frontier  will  he  con¬ 
siderably  reduced.” 

Now  anybody  who  knows  anything  about  the  Canadian  frontier 


61 


and  the  sparse  Canadian  population  that  fringes  the  edge  of 
Canada,  knows  exactly  what  this  promise  holds  forth.  Anybody 
who  knows  anything  about  the  export  vegetable  product  of 
Canada  knows  that  free  importation  of  Canadian  garden  truck 
would  have  about  the  same  effect  upon  the  prices  of  similar 
products  in  the  United  States  that  a  squirt  gun  full  of  water 
would  have  upon  the  temperature  of  hell. 

In  parliamentary  phrase  I  called  Mr.  Underwood’s  attention  to 
this  fact  which,  in  substance  he  readily  admitted.  He  conceded 
my  contention  that  Canadian  products  could  not  penetrate  more 
than  twenty  or  thirty  miles  into  the  interior,  as  he  also  admitted 
that  the  quantity  would  toe  insufficient  to  supply  more  than  a  few 
families  close  to  the  border. 

“But,”  said  Mr.  Underwood,  “we  may  get  some  potatoes  from 
Ireland.  We  have  long  imported  Bermuda  onions  into  this  coun¬ 
try,  and  I  should  not  wonder  If  we  should  get  quite  a  lot  of 
stuff  from  Bermuda  and,  as  I  said,  from  Ireland.” 

Don’t  laugh — go  on.  Hear  what  the  gentleman  said. 

“The  cheaper  grades  of  cotton  will  be  reduced  a  third,  the  cost 
of  woolen  goods,  including  men’s  clothing,  will  be  substantially 
reduced,  and  I  expect  the  price  of  sugar  to  be  reduced  almost  if 
not  quite  one-half.  But  sugar  will  not  reach  the  bottom  price 
for  three  years,  and  the  reductions  in  cotton  and  woolen  goods 
will  hardly  be  felt  before  next  summer.” 

“Mr.  Underwood,”  said  I,  “I  believe  the  Democratic  party  has 
made  an  honest  reduction  of  the  tariff.  As  a  result,  the  cost  of 
living  may  or  may  not  be  materially  reduced,  depending  upon 
whether  the  trusts,  jobbers,  reta#ers  and  other  gentlemen  are 
able  to  absorb  the  reductions  or  whether  they  are  compelled  to 
pass  them  along  to  the  people.  But,  assuming  that  the  reduc¬ 
tions  will  be  passed  along  and  that  the  cost  of  living  will  be 
materially  reduced,  can  you  show  me  wherein  the  people  will  be 
helped?” 

Mr.  Underwood  looked  up  from  his  clasped  hands  in  astonish¬ 
ment. 

“Isn’t  the  high  cost  of  living  what  the  people  are  crying  out 
against?”  he  asked.  “Will  not  they  be  benefited  if  the  cost  of 
living  be  reduced?” 

I  admitted  the  obvious  fact  that  the  people  were  opposed  to 
high  living  costs  and  in  favor  of  lower  ones.  I  also  asserted 
that  people  did  not  know  what  caused  their  misery  and  therefore 
did  not  know  what  would  cure  it.  I  offered  in  proof  the  peculiar 
political  fate  that  has  followed  Mr.  Bryan.  In  1896,  the  cost 
of  living  was  so  low  that  Mr.  Byran  urged  the  people  to  turn 
the  country  over  to  him  in  order  that,  with  free  silver,  he  might 
Increase  the  cost  of  all  commodities,  including  labor.  The  people 
declined,  but  the  trusts  and  other  agencies  removed  the  low 
prices  of  which  Mr.  Byran  complained.  They  removed  them  so 
completely  that  no  vestige  of  them  was  left.  They  removed  low 
prices  so  completely  that  Mr.  Byran  and  his  party,  having  formerly 
sought  power  to  increase  prices,  sought  power  in  1912  to  lower 
\n  P1?®1*.  w°rds>  ^r-  fyraP.  in  campaigning  for  Wilson  in 
1912,  asked  that  his  party  be  given  power  to  destroy  the  high 
prices  that  in  1896  he  said  were  desirable.  And  the  irony  of 
fate  gave  Mr.  Byran  his  greatest  political  office  for  the  part  he 
took  in  1912  in  trying  to  restore  the  low  prices  against  which 
he  protested  so  bitterly  in  1896.  s wmcn 

mrS2P?i?fen^Ur  law’”  ?aid  1  l.°  Mr-  Underwood,  “were  to 

make  the  cost  of  living  as  low  as  it  was  in  1896.  The  peoDle 
1^96.  Does  your  law  contain  anything  that 
would  make  them  happier  now?”  * 

We  had  come  somewhere  near  the  nub  of  the  question  The 
people  are  never  prosperous  whether  the  cost  of  living  is  high  or 

becSuseX  ran  f r”Z  them® like* a  d£?rParently'  he  did  know 
k„'L*  have  tune  so  into  this  matter,”  he  said.  “I  am  verv 
now‘+,  Hererr,?:re  copies  of  two  speeches  that  I  made  on  the 
tariff  question  They  set  forth  my  views  in  full  -  aae  on  the 
them,  if  you  like.” 


You  may  have 


Do  these  speeches  answer  my  question?”  I  asked  t 

*°S$8  repiiea!®  C°n^‘°™’  ^o?d  tLt’hfiEaUlFZS 

“Well  don’t  you  care  to  answer  it?”  I  asked  “It  would  ,oom 
vn,T°irth  an9Yetrin&.  Low  prices  made  only 'misery  infill  Tf 


not  go 


,.T  ---  your  law  without  describing  it  -- 

.  *  fjn  very  busy,"  repeated  Mr.  Underwood  '  “I  could 

into  that  matter  without  more  time/’  uexwooa-  1  COUId 

The  Democratic  Tariff  Bill  Brings  No  Relief  Whatsoever. 

(From  the  Literary  Digest,  April  4,  1914.) 

it  r~Vnh:A°n,Si?erS  !t  qu,ite/?ir  to  judge  a  tariff  law  befo; 

on  I™/  h,  jhad  t  ‘°  take  fuU  effect  But  the  official  figur. 
imports  during  the  first  four  months  of  the  new  law  ar 

industries'  affect^,  Sta*ement?  of  leaders  in  certain  impo’rtai 
tries  affected  by  the  revision,  have  enabled  some  of  oi 


62 


editors  to  make  up  their  minds  about  what  the  reduction  is 
doing,  and  even  to  venture  some  predictions  as  to  what  it  is 
likely  to  do.  Speaking  generally,  and  mindful  of  certain  im¬ 
portant  exceptions,  these  observers  find  that,  on  the  whole,  the 
Underwood  Tariff  has  so  far  accomplished  little,  either  for  good 
or  ill.  Its  beginnings,  declares  the  New  York  Sun  (Ind.),  “show 
loss  of  revenue,  decreased  importations  of  raw  and  partly  manu¬ 
factured  materials  in  many  great  industries,  stimulated  and 
enlarged  importations  of  finished  manufactures.”  The  increased 
importations  of  foodstuffs  do  not  seem  to  have  brought  the 
consumer  any  appreciable  reduction  in  the  cost  of  living,  nor 
are  the  big  industries  thought  to  be  facing  ruin  as  a  result  of 
foreign  competition.  To  mention  a  few  of  the  chief  industries, 
we  find  the  New  York  Journal  of  Commerce  asserting  that  the 
steel  business  “had  nothing  to  fear  from  the  tariff  changes  and 
has  not  been  perceptibly  affected  by  them.”  The  textile  trades 
were  noticeably  hit,  but  seem  to  be  generally  prosperous  and 
confident  of  keeping  their  grip  on  the  domestic  market  and 
even  of  reaching  out  into  foreign  fields.  The  consumer  and 
the  farmer  alike  may  find  food  for  thought  in  the  statements 
showing  that  the  meat  importations  in  the  first  quarter  under 
the  new  tariff  are  almost  infinitesimal  compared  with  the 
national  consumption  for  that  period.  Sugar  producers  and 
refiners  are,  indeed,  complaining,  partly  because  of*the  “tariff 
uncertainty.”  And  it  might  be  said  that  some  protectionist 
papers  warn  their  readers  that  despite  the  small  apparent  dam¬ 
age,  the  worst  is  sure  to  come.  Imports  did  not  leap  as  they 
were  expected  to,  admits  the  New  York  Press.  (Prog.),  perhaps 
because  we  had  no  money  to  pay  for  them,  but — “it  will  not  be 
very  long  before  the  United  States  will  be  digging  deep  down 
into  its  jeans  to  pay  its  foreign  bills  of  hundreds  of  millions  of 
dollars  a  year!”  The  Kansas  City  Journal  (Rep.)  likewise  warns 
its  largely  agricultural  constituency  that  the  country  is  about 
to  be  flooded  “with  imported  foodstuffs  and  with  imported 
manufactures,  thereby  reducing  both  the  farmer’s  income  and 
the  consumer’s  ability  to  buy  the  products  of  the  farm.” 

The  official  figures  for  importations  for  the  first  four  months 
of  the  Underwood  tariff — October,  November,  December,  and 
January  last — are  thus  quoted  in  the  New  York  Sun’s  Wash¬ 
ington  correspondence: 

“The  total  value  of  all  manufacturers’  materials  imported  in 
the  four  months  under  the  new  law  was  $300,000,000,  as  against 
$347,000,000  in  the  same  months  under  the  Payne  law,  a  reduc¬ 
tion  of  13  per  cent.;  manufactures  ready  for  consumption  $152,- 
000,000,  against  $143,000,000,  an  increase  of  about  6  per  cent., 
and  foodstuffs  $161,000,000,  against  $142,000,000,  an  increase  of 
20  per  cent.” 

The  fact,  which  the  Philadelphia  Record  vouches  for,  that  we 
spent  $28,000,000  less  for  foreign  goods  during  thesq  four  months 
under  a  Democratic  tariff  than  we  did  under  a  Republican  tar¬ 
iff  in  the  preceding  year,  gives  “no  support  to  the  notion  that 
foreigners  are  dumping  their  products  upon  Our  shores  in  the 
hope  of  destroying  our  industries.” 

With  a  20  per  cent  gain  in  importations  of  foodstuffs,  and 
33,500,000  pounds  of  meat  said  to  have  been  brought  here  during 
the  last  quarter  of  1913,  the  New  Orleans  Times-Democrat 
wonders  why  the  addition  to  our  domestic  supply  “fails  to  affect 
retail  prices  noticeably.”  The  Wall  Street  Journal’s  answer  is 
that  our  total  imports  amounted  to  “less  than  nine-tenths  of 
one  per  cent”  of  the  estimated  total  consumption  for  those  three 
months.  Secretary  Houston,  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture!, 
points  out  that  most  of  the  beef  coming  from  Argentina  is  con¬ 
signed  from  our  Beef  Trust’s  plant  in  Argentina  to  itself.  When 
we  study  the  importations  of  all  the  principal  foodstuffs,  says 


63 


the‘'WhW,Y-°rk  Sun’s  Washin«?‘on  correspondent,  we  find  that 
While  importation  of  most  of  the  article,  w7  7 

£?  S,nh:;rhrrtrS4?r“" 31' 

a«^j«s?sjrjsj±s*  as-ttss 

&W£SE^?5S»st 

road  to  extinction.”  But  facts  as  the  World  h"6"  7  d°Wn  the 
even  more  stubborn  than  “standoat  nmllf  rG™ar^S’  are  thln&s 
find  a  number  of  editors  o-l ari  m  P  P  ophecy.  And  now  we 

of  the  American  Woolen*  Col^TlT  °”,  the  optimisti<  »<>* 
William  M.  Wood  the  Indianan  T’  ^lnua  rePort-  President 
once  said  that  no  Va„  J  coX T  “  reme^rs, 

Payne  tariff  without  shaking  A  ”  Schedu,e  K  °*  ‘he 

foundations.  But,  as  the  Phila^?10*!?  mdustry  to  its  very 
“it  is  very  clear  that  the  American  Whole^c”0"  SUmS  '*  Up’ 
seriously  from  the  strikes  in  th*  i  Company  suffered 

from  the  uncertainties  of  tariff  di,c  °  °*  mg  tra^es»  somewhat 
all,  from  the  actuTresuIts  f  a  red88?”’  HttIe-  <*  at 
report  Mr.  Wood  declare!  that  "the  t  -°f  dMies"  In  his 
we  are  fully  prepared  to  do  busine!=  ,‘S  now.settIed  and 

it  imposes.”  S  under  the  conditions  which 

(g)  LABOR  UNDER  DEMOCRATIC  ADMINISTRATION. 
Three  Great  Labor  Struggles 

w“  *  — 

0)  the  strike  of  the  miners  in  Wc  -gFeat  labor  stru£gles: 

the  Western  Federation  of  Mi^rf  i^Mielf’  2)  Strike  of 
Strike  of  the  miners  of  the  United  mL^'P”’  ?"d  (3)  ‘he 
These  Struggles  hi  L„  “  -Workers  in  Colorado. 

fraught  with  almost  as  much  disaster  to' labo''"13'  f°U8;ht’  and 
great  struggles  of  the  working  cfasf  in  J  ■  ’  ^  3"y  of  the 

cratic  administration  has  meant  a  merica-  ^  the  Demo- 

Se7nadMarenVn  View  0f  these  ‘errffic  snt?ug°gleasb°r  *  d°eS  n0t 

labor  struggles  Mgreaterw  hfsa deSl  .b°°k  WC  describe  ‘hese 

West  Virginia  situation  under  the^apt!*16  conce™ng  the 
M.ners’  Strike.”  Strangely  enough  7°  ’  ^  Vir«inia  Coal 
the  Taft  administration,  with  a  gRewfr btrUgg le  .heSan  under 
chair  and  a  Progressive  ?nvPm!  ^Publican  president  in  the 
ministration  of  this  Progressive  **  the  St?te*  Under  the  ad- 
miners  was  about  as  brutal  and^T  the  fight  against  the 
well  could  be.  The  Pr^rL!”  reIentIe^  as  such  a  struggle 
the  seven  governors  to  urge  Mr  Tn0^!  Glasscock>  one  of 
nomination  for  the  presidenev  wa, R  !  7  t0  Stand  for  the 
governor  while  the  strike  was  7tU\  ?UCCeeded  by  a  Republican 
the  struggle  proceeding  under  the  rule  of°anSS’  f  fThUS  WC  have 
parties  with  practicallv  the  ,amo  ,  .  a  the  capitalistic 

labor  is  concerned  7  ^  r6SultS  in  every  case,  so  far  as 

Some  of  the  details  of  this  struggle  we  have  related  in  a 


64 


later  article  in  Part  IV,  under  the  caption,  “Private  Armies  of 
Capitalism.”  The  famous  armored  train,  that  moved  through 
the  miners’  camp  with  machine  guns,  mowing  down  the  miners, 
men,  women,  and  children,  is  there  described  as  told  by  the 
witnesses  in  the  United  States  Senate  investigation. 

The  violent  fight  of  the  mine  owners  against  the  Western 
Federation  of  Miners  in  Michigan  took  place  under  a  Demo¬ 
cratic  governor  in  Michigan  and  a  Democratic  president  in 
Washington.  We  describe  this  strike  in  the  following  pages, 
under  the  caption,  “Michigan  Copper  Miners’  Strike.” 

The  struggle  in  Colorado  we  have  described  in  the  following 
pages,  under  the  caption,  “Colorado  Coal  Miners’  Strike,” 
which  covers  the  story  of  the  Ludlow  tragedy  and  the  progress 
of  the  strike  up  to  the  date  of  our  going  to  press  (June  1,  1914.) 

These  three  great  labor  tragedies,  all  coming  within  the  brief 
space  of  two  years,  ought  to  dispel  once  for  all  any  hope  that 
any  one  might  have  for  any  relief  to  labor  thorugh  a  Demo¬ 
cratic  administration. 

The  Wilson  Administration  and  Labor. 

By  Lueien  Saint. 

“A  better  business  system,”  is  the  phrase  used  by  President 
Wilson  to  describe  the  hope  of  his  administration;  and  in  a 
“Record  of  Achievement,”  issued  by  the  Democratic  National 
Committee  of  this  city,  the  workers  of  the  country  can  for  the 
first  time  fully  realize  that  every  effort  of  the  Democrats  has 
been  to  help  business  and  to  do  nothing  for  the  laboring  man. 
Of  the  thirty-one  “achievements”  of  the  Administration,  only 
one  has  anything  to  do  directly  with  labor;  this  is  the  amend¬ 
ment  to  the  Railway  Arbitration  Act,  hurriedly  enacted  because 
of  the  obvious  imperfections  of  the  existing  law. 

It  is  clear  that  the  Democratic  party  has  done  nothing  for 
labor,  and,  from  the  best  sources  of  information  in  the  Capitol, 
it  is  equally  clear  that  the  Democratic  party  is  not  planning 
to  do  anything  for  labor. 

In  fact,  the  Democrats  in  Congress  have  shut  down  on  labor 
legislation  and  have  refused  to  resurrect  bills  which  they  talked 
about,  and  even  voted  on,  when  Taft  was  in  the  White  House 
and  when  there  was,  therefore,  not  the  remotest  chance  of  their 
enactment  into  law.  Among  these  bills,  now  dead,  are: 

THE  CONVICT  LABOR  GOODS  BILL  (abolishing  the 
interstate  traffic  in  contract  convict-made  goods). 

THE  ANTI-INJUNCTION  AND  CONTEMPT  BILLS. 

THE  SHERMAN  BILL  (doing  away  with  the  involuntary 
servitude  of  seamen  under  the  present  archaic  laws  and  requir¬ 
ing  steamship  lines  to  make  provision  for  safety). 

THE  NATIONAL  CHILD  LABOR  BILL. 

MINIMUM  WAGE  LEGISLATION. 

OLD  AGE  PENSIONS. 

WORKMEN’S  COMPENSATION. 

Not  a  word  is  being  said  about  even  this  superficial  kind  of 
reform. 

The  “Record  of  Achievement”  is  full  of  half  statements 
calculated  to  mislead  the  workingman  who  is  not  familiar  with 
the  true  situation  at  Washington.  For  instance,  it  is  stated 
that  as  a  result  of  the  exposures  made  by  President  Wilson, 
the  lobby  has  been  eliminated  from  the  halls  of  Congress.  The 
lobby  has  not  been  eliminated.  The  National  Association  of 
Manufacturers  is  still  on  the  job,  and  everybody  knows  it.  The 
steamship  lobby  is  also  on  the  job,  and  as  these  words  are  being 
written  the  United  States  Chamber  of  Commerce,  representing 
nearly  a  third  of  a  million  of  business  men,  is  holding  a  meet- 


65 


shfpe  th e ' p e n  d i ng ^rus  t Tgi station ^  Wi'S°n’S  Cabinet  °*CerS  t0 

^s^&s&ssss^ 

fo  marit!l|SPeCial  «ndC  t0  the  schemes  of  the  NavyPDepartment 

Woodrow  Wilson  s  “achievements,”  in  short  have 
two  parties  the  Democratic  Party  ’and  C  i^  B  S 
They  have  not  profited  the  workers.  They  have  not  reduced  the 
cost  of  living,  raised  wages,  or  cut  down  long  hours  of  toil 
These  achievements  have  been  many  and  the  list  is  impressive 
to  look  at:  but  they  don’t  amount  to  a  hill  of  beans.  ? 

Democrats  for  Child  Labor. 

(Newspaper  clipping.) 

T<  n  .  .  Washington,  D.  C.,  March  18,  1914 

f  ,The,  Democratic  majority  of  the  House  of  Representatives 
today  took  an  open  stand  in  favor  of  child  labor.  The  House 

the5  ZZctsZ  V  ^  ?rohibitJ”»  importatfon  of 

the  products  of  foreign  convict  labor.  Representative  Kellev 

of  Pennsylvania  offered  an  amendment  extending  the  prohibit 

ti°n  t0  the  Products  of  factories  employing  children  under  14 

10aand°  2awars  ldreSentatiVeiKe"ey  °f  MichiSan  said  children 
10  and  12  years  old  were  employed  in  the  Georgia  mills 

.  S,uch  a  statcment  comes  with  bad  grace  from  the  gentle- 
man  from  Michigan,  whose  state  now  is  a  stench  in  the  nostrils 
of  Civilization,  Representative  Howard  of  Georgia  said  “What 

them6"!  t0.  T  abldln»  citizens  in  your  state?  You  shotgun 
them,  shoot  them,  murder  them  ”  ^ 

Representative  Tribble  of  Georgia  read  from  the  statutes  of 

f  K-uute  t0nrhCT  that  the  emPi°yment  of  children  under  14  is 
forbidden.  Mr.  Mann  silenced  Mr.  Tribble  by  taking  the  volume 

USB 

am^dmem'fexcludhi^t'h^prod^cts^o^children  mide'r  ^"years' 
of  age,  was  defeated,  38  to  77  y 

a  sss 

3.  The  Progressive  Party. 

(a)  PROGRESSIVE  PLATFORM-1912 

problemsCOhnasCicaTedlttheh  Pe°P'e’  ”  3  time  of  ^ve  nations! 
awakened  sense  oflustice  ®  3  “W  P3r‘y’  b°rn  °f  the  na‘ion’s 
fulfil  0f.*\e  *’ro?ressive  Party  here  dedicate  ourselves  to  the 

the^Lh?Id  w,th,ThomaS  Jefferacm  and  Abraham  Lincoln  that 
purposeHnrtoUeS^  of 

s  2JUZS  Sss  ihsTJ 


use  their  sovereign  powers  to  establish  and  maintain  equal 
opportunity  and  industrial  justice,  to  secure  which  this  govern¬ 
ment  was  founded  and  without  which  no  republic  can  endure. 

This  country  belongs  to  the  people  who  inhabit  it.  Its 
resources,  its  business,  its  institutions,  and  its  laws  should  be 
utilized,  maintained,  or  altered  in  whatever  manner  will  best 
promote  the  general  interest.  It  is  time  to  set  the  public  wel¬ 
fare  in  the  first  place. 

The  Old  Parties. 

Political  parties  exist  to  secure  responsible  government  and 
to  execute  the  will  of  the  people.  From  these  great  tasks  both 
of  the  old  parties  have  turned  aside.  Instead  of  instruments 
to  promote  the  general  welfare,  they  have  become  tools  of 
corrupt  interests  which  use  them  impartially  to  serve  their 

selfish  purposes.  '  .  .  .  , 

Behind  the  ostensible  government  sits  enthroned  an  invisible 
government,  owing  no  allegiance  and  acknowledging  no  respon¬ 
sibility  to  the  people.  To  destroy  this  invisible  government, 
to  dissolve  the  unholy  alliance  between  corrupt  business  and 
corrupt  politics,  is  the  first  task  of  the  statesmanship  of  the  day. 

The  deliberate  betrayal  of  its  trust  by  the  Republican  party 
and  the  fatal  incapacity  of  the  Democratic  party  to  deal  with 
the  new  issues  of  the  new'  time  have  compelled  the  people  to 
forge  a  new  instrument  of  government  through  which  to  give 
effect  to  their  will  in  laws  and  institutions.  Unhampered  by 
tradition,  uncorrupted  by  power,  undismayed  by  the  magnitude 
of  the  task,  the  new  party  offers  itself  as  the  instrument  of  the 
people  to  sweep  away  old  abuses,  to  build  a  new  and  nobler 

commonwealth.  , 

This  declaration  is  our  covenant  with  the  people,  and  we 
hereby  bind  the  party  and  its  candidates  in  state  and  nation  to 
the  pledges  made  herein. 

The  Rule  of  the  People. 

The  National  Progressive  Party,  committed  to  the  principle 
of  government  by  a  self-controlled  democracy  expressing  its 
will  through  representatives  of  the  people,  pledges  itself  to 
secure  such  alterations  in  the  fundamental  law  of  the  several 
states  and  of  the  United  States  as  shall  insure  the  representative 
character  of  the  government. 

In  particular  the  party  declares  for  direct  primaries  for  the 
nomination  of  state  and  national  officers,  for  nation-wide  pref¬ 
erential  primaries  for  candidates  for  the  presidency,  for  the 
direct  election  of  United  States  senators  by  the  people,  and,  we 
urge  on  the  states  the  policy  of  the  short  ballot  with  responsi¬ 
bility  to  the  people  secured  by  the  initiative,  referendum,  and 
recall. 

Amendment  of  Constitution. 

The  Progressive  party,  believing  that  a  free  people  should 
have  the  power  from  time  to  time  to  amend  their  fundamental 
law  so  as  to  adopt  it  progressively  to  the  changing  needs  of 
the  people,  pledges  itself  to  provide  a  more  easy  and  expeditious 
method  of  amending  the  federal  Constitution. 

Nation  and  State. 

Up  to  the  limit  of  the  Constitution,  and  later  by  amendment 
of  the  Constitution,  if  found  necessary,  we  advocate  bringing 
under  effective  national  jurisdiction  those  problems  which  have 
expanded  beyond  reach  of  the  individual  states. 

It  is  as  grotesque  as  it  is  intolerable  that  the  several  states 
should  by  unequal  laws  in  matters  of  common  concern  become 


67 


competing  commercial  agencies,  barter  the  lives  of  their  chil¬ 
dren,  the  health  of  their  women  and  the  safety  and  well  being 
of  their  working  people  for  the  profit  of  their  financial  interests. 

The  extreme  insistence  on  state’s  rights  by  the  Democratic 
party  in  the  Baltimore  platform  demonstrates  anew  its  inability 
to  understand  the  world  into  which  it  has  survived  or  administer 
the  affairs  of  a  union  of  states  which  in  all  essential  respects 
become  one  people. 

Equal  Suffrage. 

The  Progressive  party,  believing  that  ilo  people  can  justly 
claim  to  be  a  true  democracy  which  denies  political  rights  on 
account  of  sex,  pledges  itself  to  the  task  of  securing  equal 
suffrage  to  men  and  women  alike. 

Corrupt  Practices. 

We  pledge  our  party  to  legislation  that  will  compel  strict 
limitation  of  all  campaign  contributions  and  expenditures,  and 
detailed  publicity  of  both  before  as  well  as  after  primaries  and 
elections. 

We  pledge  our  party  to  legislation  compelling  the  registra¬ 
tion.  of  lobbyists;  publicity  of  committee  hearings,  except  in 
foreign  affairs,  and  recording  of  all  votes  in  committee;  and 
forbidding  federal  appointees  from  holding  office  in  state  or 
national  political  organisations  or  taking  part  as  officers  or 
delegates  in  political  conventions  for  the  nomination  of  elective 
state  or  national  officials. 

♦  The  Courts. 

The  Progressive  party  demands  such  restriction  of  the  power 
of  the  courts  as  shall  leave  to  the  people  the  ultimate  authority 
to  determine  fundamental  questions  of  social  welfare  and  public 
policy.  To  secure  this  end  it  pledges  itself  to  provide: 

(1)  That  when  an  act,  passed  under  the  police  power  of  the 
state,  is  held  unconstitutional  under  the  state  constitution  by 
the  courts,  the  people,  after  an  ample  interval  for  deliberation, 
shall  have  an  opportunity  to  vote  on  the  question  whether  they 
desire  the  act  to  become  law  notwithstanding  such  decision. 

(2)  That  every  decision  of  the  highest  appellate  court  of  a 
state  declaring  an  act  of  the  legislature  unconstitutional  on  the 
ground  of  its  violation  of  the  federal  Constitution  shall  be 
subject  to  the  same  review  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  -as  is  now  accorded  to  decisions  sustaining  such  legis¬ 
lation. 

Administration  of  Justice. 

The  Progressive  party,  in  order  to  secure  to  the  people  a 
better  administration  of  justice  and  by  that  means  to  bring 
about  a  -more  general  respect  for  the  law  and  the  courts,  pledges 
itself  to  work  unceasingly  for  the  reform  of  legal  procedure  and 
judicial  methods. 

We  believe  that  the  issuance  of  injunctions  in  cases  arising 
out  of  labor  disputes  should  be  prohibited  when  such  injunc¬ 
tions  would  not  apply  when  no  labor  disputes  existed. 

We  also  believe  that  a  person  cited  for  contempt  in  labor 
disputes,  except  when  such  contempt  was  committed  in  the 
actual  presence  of  the  court  or  so  near  thereto  as  to  interfere 
with  ,  the  proper  administration  of  justice,  should  have  a  right 
to  trial  by  jury. 

Social  and  Industrial  Justice. 

The  supreme  duty  of  the  nation  is  the  conservation  of  human 
resources  through  an  enlarged  measure  of  social  and  industrial 
justice.  We  pledge  ourselves  to  work  unceasingly  in  state  and 
nation  for: 


68 


_ 

Effective  legislation  looking  to  the  prevention  of  industrial 
accidents,  occupational  diseases,  overwork,  involuntary  un¬ 
employment,  and  other  injurious  effects  incident  to  modern 
industry. 

The  fixing  of  minimum  safety  and  health  standards  for  the 
various  occupations  and  the  exercise  of  the  public  authority  of 
state  and  nation,  including  the  federal  control  over  interstate 
commerce  and  the  taxing  power,  to  maintain  such  standards. 

The  prohibition  of  child  labor. 

Minimum  wage  standards  for  working  women,  to  provide  a 
“living  wage”  in  all  industrial  occupations. 

The  general  prohibition  of  night  work  for  women  and  the 
establishment  of  an  eight-hour  day  for  women  and  'young 
persons. 

One  day’s  rest  in  seven  for  all  wage  workers. 

The  eight-hour  day  in  continuous  twenty-four-hour  indus¬ 
tries. 

The  abolition  of  the  convict  contract  labor  system,  substitut¬ 
ing  a  system  of  prison  production  for  governmental  consumption 
only,  and  the  application  of  prisoners’  earnings  to  the  support 
of  their  dependent  families. 

Publicity  as  to  wages,  hours  and  conditions  of  labor;  full 
reports  upon  industrial  accidents  and  diseases,  and  the  opening 
to  public  inspection  of  all  tallies,  weights,  measures  and  check 
systems  on  labor  products. 

Standards  of  compensation  for  death  by  industrial  accident 
and  injury  and  trade  disease  which  will  transfer  the  burden  of 
lost  earnings  from  the  families  of  working  people  to  the  in¬ 
dustry  and  thus, to  the  community. 

The  protection  of  home  life  against  the  hazards  of  sickness, 
irregular  employment  and  old  age  through  the  adoption  of  a 
system  of  social  insurance  adapted  to  American  use. 

.The  development  of  the  creative  labor  power  of  America  by 
lifting  the  last  load  of  illiteracy  from  American  youth  and  estab¬ 
lishing  continuation  schools  for  industrial  education  under 
public  control  and  encouraging  agricultural  education  and  dem¬ 
onstration  in  rural  schools. 

The  establishment  of  industrial  research  laboratories  to  put 
the  methods  and  discoveries  of  science  at  the  service  of  Amer¬ 
ican  producers. 

We  favor  the  organization  of  the  workers,  men  and  women, 
as  a  means  of  protecting  their  interests  and  of  promoting  their 
progress. 

Department  of  Labor. 

We  pledge  the  party  to  establish  a  department  of  labor  with 
a  seat  in  the  cabinet  and  with  wide  jurisdiction  over  matters 
affecting  the  conditions  of  labor  and  living. 

Country  Life. 

The  development  and  prosperity  of  country  life  are  as  im¬ 
portant  to  the  people  who  live  in  the  cities  as  they  are  to  the  I 
farmers.  Increase  of  prosperity  on  the  farm  will  favorably 
affect  the  cost  of  living  and  promote  the  interests  of  all  who 
dwell  in  the  country  and  all  who  depend  upon  its  products  for  j 
clothing,  shelter  and  food. 

We  pledge  our  party  to  foster  the  development  of  agricul¬ 
tural  credit  and  co-operation,  the  teaching  of  agriculture  in 
schools,  agricultural  college  extension,  the  use  of  mechanical 
power  on  the  farm,  and  to  re-establish  the  country  life  com¬ 
mission,  thus  directly  promoting  the  welfare  of  the  farmers  and 


bringing  the  benefits  of  better  farming,  better  business  and 
better  living  within  their  reach. 

High  Cost  of  Diving. 

The  high  cost  of  living  is  due  partly  to  world-wide  and  partly 
to  local  causes,  partly  to  natural  and  partly  to  artificial  causes. 
Ihe  measures  proposed  in  this  platform  on  various  subjects, 

,  such  as  the  tariff,  the  trusts  and  conservation,  will  of  themselves 
remove  the  artificial  causes.  There  will  remain  other  elements, 
such  as  the  tendency  to  leave  the  country  for  the  city,  waste, 
extravagance,  bad  system  of  taxation,  poor  methods  of’ raising 
crops,  and  bad  business  methods  in  marketing  crops.  To  remedy 
these  conditions  requires  the  fullest  information  and,  based  on 
this  information,  effective  government  supervision  and  control 
to  remove  all  the  artificial  causes.  We  pledge  ourselves  to  such 
full  and  immediate  inquiry  and  to  immediate  action  to  deal  with 
every  need  such  inquiry  discloses. 

Health. 

We  favor  the  union  of  all  the  existing  agencies  of  the  federal 
government  dealing  with  the  public  health  into  a  single  national 
health  service  without  discrimination  against  or  for  any  one  set 
of  therapeutic  methods,  school  of  medicine,  or  school  of  healing, 
with  such  additional  powers  as  -may  be  necessary  to  enable  it  to 
perform  efficiently  such  duties  in  the  protection  of  the  public 
from  preventable  disease  as  may  be  properly  undertaken  by  the 
federal  authorities,  including  the  execution  of  existing  laws  re¬ 
garding  pure  food,  quarantine  and  cognate  subjects;  the  pro¬ 
motion  of  vital  statistics  and  the  extension  of  the  registration 
area  of  such  statistics  and  co-operation  with  the  health  activities 
of  the  various  states  and  cities  of  the  nation. 

Trust  Regulations. 

We  believe  that  true  popular  government,  justice  and  pros¬ 
perity  go  hand  in  hand  and,  so  believing,  it  is  our  purpose  to 
secure  that  large  measure  of  general  prosperity  which  is  the 
fruit  of  legitimate  and  honest  business,  fostered  by  equal  justice 
and  by  sound  progressive  laws. 

We  demand  that  the  test  of  true  prosperity  shall  be  the 
benefits  conferred  thereby  on  all  the  citizens,  not  confined  to 
individuals  or  classes,  and  that  the  test  of  corporate  efficiency 
shall  be  the  ability  better  to  serve  the  public;  that  those  who 
profit  by  the  control  of  business  affairs  shall  justify  that  profit 
and  that  control  by  sharing  with  the  public  the  fruits  thereof. 

We  therefore  demand  a  strong  national  regulation  of  inter¬ 
state  corporations.  The  corporation  is  an  essential  part  of 
modern  business.  The  concentration  of  modern  business  in 
some  degree  is  both  inevitable  and  necessary  for  national  and 
international  business  efficiency.  But  the  existing  concentration 
of  vast  wealth  under  a  corporate  system,  unguarded  and  uncon¬ 
trolled  by  the  nation,  has  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  few  men 
enormous,  secret,  irresponsible  power  over  the  daily  life  of  the 
citizen  a  power  insufferable  in  a  free  government  and  certain 
of  abuse. 

This  power  has  been  abused  in  monopoly  of  national  re¬ 
sources,  in  stock  watering,  in  unfair  competition  and  unfair 
privileges  and  finally  in  sinister  influences  on  the  public  agencies 
of  state  and  nation.  We  do  not  fear  commercial  power,  but 
we  insist  that  it  shall  be  exercised  openly,  under  publicity, 
supervision  and  regulation  of  the  most  efficient  sort  which  will 
preserve  its  good  while  eradicating  and  preventing  its  evils. 

To  that  end  we  urge  the  establishment  of  a  strong  federal 
administrative  commission  of  high  standing,  which  shall  main- 


tain  permanent  active  supervision  over  industrial  corporations 
engaged  in  interstate  commerce,  or  such  of  them  as  are  of  public 
importance,  doing  for  them  what  the  government  now  does  for 
the  national  banks  and  what  is  now  done  for  the  railroads  by 
the  interstate  commerce  commission.  Such  a  commission  must 
enforce  the  complete  publicity  of  those  corporate  transactions 
which  are  of  public  interest;  must  attack  unfair  competition, 
false  capitalization  and  special  privilege  and  by  continuous 
trained  watchfulness  guard  and  keep  open  equally  to  all  the 
highways  of  American  commerce. 

Thus  the  business  man  will  have  certain  knowledge  of  the 
law  and  will  be  able  to  conduct  his  business  easily  in  conformity 
therewith,  the  investor  will  find  security  for  his  capital,  divi¬ 
dends  will  be  rendered  more  certain  and  the  savings  of  the 
people  will  be  drawn  naturally  and  safely  into  the  channels-  of 
trade. 

Under  such  a  system  of  constructive  regulation  legitimate 
business,  freed  from  confusion,  uncertainty  and  fruitless  liti¬ 
gation,  will  develop  normally  in  response  to  the  energy  and 
enterprise  of  the  American  business  man. 

Patents. 

We  pledge  ourselves  to  the  enactment  of  a  patent  law  which 
will  make  it  impossible  Tor  patents  to  be  suppressed  or  used 
against  the  public  welfare  in  the  interests  of  injurious  monopo¬ 
lies. 

Interstate  Commerce  Commission. 

We  pledge  our  party  toi  secure  to  the  interstate  commerce 
commission  the  power  to  value  the  physical  property  of  rail¬ 
roads.  In  order  that  the  power  of  the  commission  to  protect 
the  people  may  not  be  impaired  or  destroyed,  we  demand  the 
abolition  of  the  commerce  court. 

Currency. 

We  believe  there  exists  imperative  need  for  prompt  legis¬ 
lation  for  the  improvement  of  our  national  currency  system. 
We  believe  the  present  method  of  issuing  notes  through  private 
agencies  is  harmful  and  unscientific.  The  issue  of  currency  is 
fundamentally  a  government  function  and  the  system  should 
have  as  basic  principles  soundness  and  elasticity.  The  control 
should  be  lodged  with  the  government  and  should  be  protected 
from  domination  or  manipulation  by  Wall  Street  or  any  special 
interests. 

We  are  opposed  to  the  so-called  Aldrich  currency  bill 
because  its  provisions  would  place  our  currency  and  credit 
system  in  private  banks,  not  subject  to  effective  public  control. 

Commercial  Development. 

The  time  has  come  when  the  federal  government  should 
co-operate  with  manufacturers  and  producers  in  extending  our 
foreign  commerce.  To  this  end  we  demand  adequate  appro¬ 
priations  by  Congress  and  the  appointment  of  diplomatic  and 
consular  officers  solely  with  a  view  to  their  special  fitness  and 
worth  and  not  in  consideration  of  political  expediency. 

It  is  imperative  to  the  welfare  of  our  people  that  we  enlarge 
and  extend  our  foreign  commerce.  We  are  pre-eminently  fitted 
•  to  do  this  because  as  a  people  we  have  developed,  high  skill  in 
the  art  of  manufacturing.  Our  business  men  are  strong  exec¬ 
utives,  strong  organizers.  In  every  way  possible  our  federal 
government  should  co-operate  in  this  important  matter. 

Any  one  who  has  had  opportunity  to  study  and  observe  first 
hand  Germany’s  course  in  this  respect  must  realize  that  their 


71 


policy  of  co-operation  between  government  and  business  has 
m  a  comparatively  few  years  made  them  the  leading  competitors 
for  the  commerce  of  the  world.  l  s 

It  should  be  remembered  that  they  are  doing  this  on  a 
national  scale  and  with  large  units  of  business,  while  the  Dem¬ 
ocrats  would  have  us  believe  that  we  should  do  it  with  small 
units  of  business  which  would  be  controlled,  not  by  the  national 
government,  but  for  forty-eight  conflicting  state  sovereignties 

such  a  policy  is  utterly  out  of  keeping  with  the  progress  of 
the  times  and  gives  our  great  commercial  rivals  in  Europe 
hungry  for  international  markets,  golden  opportunities  of  which 
they  are  rapidly  taking  advantage. 

Conservation. 

The  natural  resources  of  the  nation  must  be  promptly  devel¬ 
oped  and  generously  used  to  supply  the  people’s  needs,  but 
we  can  not  safely  allow  them  to  be  wasted,  exploited,  monopo- 
lized,  or  controlled  against  the  general  good.  We*heartily  favor 
the  policy  of  conservation  and  we  pledge  our  party  to  protect 
the  national  forests  without  hindering  their  legitimate  use  for 
the  benefit  of  all  the  people.  Agricultural  lands  in  the  national 
forests  are  and  should  remain  open  to  the  genuine  settler. 
Conservation  will  not  retard  legitimate  development.  The 
honest  settler  must  receive  his  patent  promptly  without  hind¬ 
rance  rules  or  delays. 

We  believe  ,  that  the  remaining  forests,  coal  and  oil  lands 
water  powers  and  other  natural  resources  still  in  state  or 
national  control  (except  agricultural  lands)  are  more  likely  to 
be  wisely  conserved  and  utilized  for  the  general  welfare  if  held 
in  the  public  hands.  In  order  that  consumers  and  producers 
managers  and  workmen,  now  and  hereafter,  need  not  pay  toll 
to  private  monopolies  of  power  and  raw  material,  we  demand 
that  such  resources  shall  be  retained  by  the  state  or  nation  and 
opened  to  immediate  use  under  laws  which  will  encourage 
development  and  make  to  the  people  a  moderate  return  for 
benefits  conferred. 

In  particular  we  pledge  our  party  to  require  reasonable  com¬ 
pensation  to  the  public  for  water  power  rights  hereafter  granted 
by  the  public.  We  pledge  legislation  to  lease  to  the  public 
grazmg  lands  under  equitable  provisions  now  pending  which 
will  increase  the  production  of  food  for  the  people  and  thor¬ 
oughly  safeguard  the  rights  of  the  actual  homemaker.  Natural 
resources  whose  conservation  is  necessary  for  the  national  wel¬ 
fare  should  be  owned  or  controlled  by  the  nation. 


Good  Roads. 


We  recognize  the  vital  importance  of  good  roads  and  we 
pledge  our  party  to  foster  their  extension  in  every  proper  way, 
and  we  favor  the  early  construction  of  national  highways.  We 
also  favor  the  extension  of  the  rural  free  delivery  service.' 


Alaska. 

The  coal  and  other  natural  resources  of  Alaska  should  be 
opened  to  development  at  once.  They  are  owned  by  the  people 
of  the  United  States,  and  are  safe  from  monopoly,  waste,  or 
destruction  only  while  so  owned.  We  demand  that  they  shall 
neither  be  sold  nor  given  away  except  under  the  homestead  law, 
but  while  held  in  government  ownership  shall  be  opened  to  use 
promptly  upon  liberal  terms  requiring  immediate  development. 

Thus  the  benefit  of  cheap  fuel  will  accrue  to  the  goverfiment 
of  the  United  States  and  to  the  people  of  Alaska  and  the  Pacific 
coast;  the  settlement  of  extensive  agricultural  lands  will  be 
hastened;  the  extermination  of  the  salmon  will  be  prevented, 


72 


and  the  just  and  wise  development  of  Alaskan  resources  will 
take  the  place  of  private  extortion  or  monopoly.  We  demand 
also  that  extortion  or  monopoly  in  transportation  shall  be  pre¬ 
vented  by  the  prompt  acquisition,  construction,  or  improvement 
by  the  government  of  such  railroads,  harbor  and  other  facilities 
for  the  transportation  as  the  welfare  of  the  people  may  demand. 

We  promise  the  people  of  the  territory  of  Alaska  the  same 
measure  of  local  self-government  that  was  given  to  other 
American  territories,  and  that  federal  officials  appointed  there 
shall  be  qualified  by  previous  bona  fide  residence  in  the  territory. 

Waterways. 

The  rivers  of  the  United  States  are  the  natural  arteries  of 
this  continent.  We  demand  that  they  shall  be  opened  to  traffic 
as  indispensable  parts  of  a  great  nation-wide  system  of  trans¬ 
portion,  in  which  the  Panama  canal  will  be  the  central  link, 
thus  enabling  the  whole  interior  of  the  United  States  to  share 
with  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  seaboards  in  the  benefit  derived 
from  the  canal.  It  is  a  national  obligation  to  develop  our  rivers 
and  especially  the  Mississippi  and  its  tributaries,  without  delay, 
under  a  comprehensive  general  plan  governing  each  river  sys¬ 
tem  from  its  source  to  its  mouth,  designed  to  secure  its  highest 
usefulness  for  navigation,  irrigation,  domestic  supply,  water¬ 
power  and  the  prevention  of  floods. 

We  pledge  our  party  to  the  immediate  preparation  of  such  a 
plan  which  should  be  made  and  carried  out  in  a  close  and 
friendly  co-operation  between  the  nation,  the  states  and  the 
cities  affected.  Under  such  a  plan,  the  destructive  floods  of  the 
Mississippi  and  other  streams  which  represent  a  vast  and  need¬ 
less  loss  'to  the  nation  would  be  controlled  by  forest  conserva¬ 
tion  and  water  storage  at  the  headwaters  and  >y  levees  below, 
land  sufficient  to  support,  millions  of  people  would  be  reclaimed 
from  the  deserts  and  the  swamps,  waterpower  enough  to  trans¬ 
form  the  industrial  standings  of  whole  states  would  be  devel¬ 
oped,  adequate  water  terminals  would  be  provided,  transporta¬ 
tion  by  river  would  revive  and  the  railroads  would  be  compelled 
to  co-operate  as  freely  with  the  boat  lines  as  with  each  other. 

The  equipment,  organization  and  experience  acquired  in  con¬ 
structing  the  Panama  canal  soon  will  be  available  for  the  Iakes- 
to-the-gulf  deep  waterway  and  other  portions  of  this  great  work 
and  should  be  utilized  by  the  nation  in  co-operation  with  the 
various  states  at  the  lowest  net  cost  to  the  people. 

Panama  Canal. 

The  Panama  canal,  built  and  paid  for  by  the  American 
people,  must  be  used  primarily  for  their  benefit.  We  demand 
that  the  canal  shall  be  so  operated  as  to  break  the  transporta¬ 
tion  monopoly  now  held  and  misused  by  the  transcontinental 
railroads  by  maintaining  sea  competition  with  them;  tha't  ships  i 
directly  or  indirectly  owned  or  controlled  by  American  railroad 
corporation^  shall  not  be  permitted  to  use  the  canal,  and  that  | 
American  ships  engaged  in  coastwise  trade  shall  pay  no  tolls,  j 

The  Progressive  party  will  favor  legislation  having  for  its 
aim  the  development  pf  friendship  and  commerce  between  the  j 
United  States  and  Latin  American  nations. 

Tariff. 

We  believe  in  a  protective  tariff  which  shall  equalize  con¬ 
ditions  of  competition  between  the  United  States  and  foreign 
countries,  both  for  the  farmer  and  the  manufacturer,  and  which 
shall  maintain  for  labor  an  adequate  standard  of  living.  Pri¬ 
marily,  the  benefit  of  any  tariff  should  be  disclosed  in  the  pay 


73 

envelope  of  the  laborer  We  declare  that  no  industry  deserves 
protect, on  which  ,s  unfair  to  labor  or  which  is  operating  in 
Violation  of  federal  law.  We  believe  that  the  presumption  is 
always  in  favor  of  the  consuming  public. 

We  demand  tariff  revision  because  the  present  tariff  is  unjust 
to  the  people  of  the  United  States.  Fair  dealing  toward  the 
people  requires  an  immediate  downward  revision  of  those 
schedules  wherein  duties  are  shown  to  be  unjust  or  excessive 

sciemific  miff  °  —  ‘°  the  es‘ablishment  of  a  non-partisan 

to  effber  b ^  ,cona™lssion,  reporting  both  to  the  president  and 
to  either  branch  of  Congress,  which  shall  report,  first,  as  to  the 

or1an-°f  rr°dUCa°ffi  e.fficlency  of  labor,  capitalization,  industrial 
S  r  i  and  !■  CKIenC?’  a/ld  the  general  comPetitive  position 
Conhj  Country  a"d  abroad  of  industries  seeking  protection  from 
Congress,  secondly,  as  to  the  revenue  producing  power  of  the 
tariff  and  its  relation  to  these  sources  of  government;  and,  third¬ 
ly,  as  to  the  effect  of  the  tariff  on  prices,  operations  of  middlemen 
and  on  the  purchasing  power  of  the  consumer.  We  believe  that 
t  is  commission  should  have  plenary  power  to  elicit  information 
fn„  f  ‘b,s  purpose  t0  prescribe  an  uniform  system  of  account¬ 
ing  for  the  great  protected  industries.  The  work  of  the  com¬ 
mission  should  not  prevent  the  immediate  adoption  of  acts  re- 
ducing  those  schedules  generally  recognized  as  excessive 
Tb  p  CO"demn  ,the  Payne-Aldrich  bill  as  unjust  to  the  people 
The  Republican  organization  is  in  the  hands  of  those  who  have 
bnr°J;n’  can  noi  again  be  trusted  to  keep  the  promise  of 
"'ZT/  d,OW"ward  rev,s,on-  The  Democratic  party  is  com¬ 
mitted  to  the  destruction  of,  the  protective  system  through  a 
tariff  for  revenue  only— a  policy  which  would  inevitably  produce 
widespread  industrial  and  commercial  disaster.  We  demand  the 
immediate  repeal  of  the  Canadian  reciprocity  act. 

Inheritance  and  Income  Tax. 

We  believe  in  a  graduated  inheritance  tax  as  a  national  means 
of  equalizing  the  obligations  of  holders  of  property  to  govern- 
ment,  and  we  hereby  pledge  our  party  to  enact  such  a  federal 
law  as  will  tax  large  inheritances,  returning  to  the  states  an 
equitable  percentage  of  all  amounts  collected.  We  favor  the 
ratification  of  the  pending  amendment  to  the  constitution  giving 
the  government  power  to  levy  an  income  tax. 

Peace  and  National  Defense. 

,nTh!  fur°f  efsive  party  dePlores  the  survival  in  our  civiliza- 

ennrmi,!«e  barfban!:  system  warfare  among  nations,  with  its 
enormous  waste  of  resources  even  in  time  of  peace,  and  the 
consequent  impoverishment  of  the  life  of  the  toiling  masses. 

ilicfar  fnH  e.bParty  ‘°  I5.6  itS  beSt  endeavors  substitute 
differences”^  °  peaCeful  "leans  of  settling  international 

nav^wT  anpin‘?rnational  agreement  for  the  limitation  of 
naval  forces.  Pending  such  an  agreement,  and  as  the  best 
means  of  preserving  peace,  we  pledge  ourselves  to  maintain  for 
the  present  the  policy  of  building  two  battleships  a  year. 

zenXfnPlCf f  °Ur  Pa,rtyu°  P™teCt  the  Hghts  of  American  citi¬ 
zenship  at  home  and  abroad.  No  treaty  should  receive  the 

sanction  of  our  government  which  discriminates  between  Amer¬ 
ican  citizens  because  of  birthplace,  race  or  religion,  or  that  does 
not  recognize  the  absolute  right  of  expatriation. 

The  Immigrant. 

Through  the  establishment  of  industrial  standards,  we  oro- 
pose  to  secure  to  the  able-bodied  immigrant  and  to  his  native 
fellow  workers  a  larger  share  of  American  opportunity 

wb-  bb  ,OU£nCe  the  fataI  poIicy  of  indifference  and'  neglect 
which  has  left  our  enormous  immigrant  population  to  become 


71 


t  e  prey  of  chance  and  cupidity.  We  favor  governmental  action 
to  encourage  the  distribution  of  immigrants  away  from  the  con- 
gvLte<?u Clties’  rigidly  to  supervise  all  private  agencies  dealing 
with  them,  and  to  promote  their  assimilation,  education  and 
advancement. 

Pensions. 

We  pledge  ourselves  to  a  wise  and  just  policy  of  pensioning 
American  soldiers  and  sailors  and  their  widows  and  children  by 
the  federal  government. 

And  we  approve  the  policy  of  the  southern  states  in  grant* 
ing  pensions  to  the  ex-confederate  soldiers  and  sailors  and  their 
widows  and  children. 

Parcels  Post. 

We  pledge  our  party  to  the  immediate  creation  of  a  parcels 
post,  with  rates  proportionate  to  distance  and  service. 

Civil  Service. 

We  condemn  the  violations  of  the  civil  service  law  under  the 
present  administration,  including  the  coercion  and  assessment 
of  subordinate  employes  and  the  president’s  refusal  to  punish 
such  violation  after  a  finding  of  guilty  by  his  own  commission; 
his.  distribution  of  patronage  among  subservient  congressmen, 
while  withholding  it  from  those  who  refuse  support  of  adminis¬ 
tration  measures;  his  withdrawal  of  nominations  from  the 
Senate  until  political  support  for  himself  was  secured  and  his 
open  use  of  the  offices  to  reward  those  who  voted  for' his  re¬ 
nomination. 

To  eradicate  these  abuses,  we  demand  not  only  the  enforce¬ 
ment  of  the  civil  service  act  in  letter  and  spirit,  but  also  legis¬ 
lation  which  will  bring  under  the  competitive  system  post¬ 
masters,  collectors,  marshals  and  all  other  non-political  officers, 
as  well  as  the  enactment  of  an  equitable  retirement  law,  and 
we  also  insist  upon  continuous  service  during  good  behavior 
and  efficiency. 

We  pledge  our  party  to  readjustment,  of  the  business  methods 
of  the  national  government  and  a  proper  co-ordination  of  the 
federal  bureaus,  which  will  increase  the  economy  and  efficiency 
of  the  government  service,  prevent  duplications  and  secure 
better  results  to  the  taxpayers  for  every  dollar  expended. 

United  States  Supervision  Over  Investments. 

The  people  of  the  United  States  are  swindled  out  of  many 
millions  of  dollars  every  year  through  worthless  investments. 
The  plain  people,  the  wage  earner  and  the  men  and  women 
with  small  savings,  have  no  way  of  knowing  the  merit  of  con¬ 
cerns  sending  out  highly  colored  prospectuses  offering  stock 
for  sale,  prospectuses  that  make  big  returns  seem  certain  and 
fortunes  easily  within  grasp.  •  I 

We  hold  it  to  be  the  duty  of  the  government  to  protect  its  j 
people  from  this  kind  of  piracy.  We  therefore  demand  wise,  I 
carefully  thought  out  legislation  that  will  give  us  such  govern-  I 
mental  supervision  over  this  matter  as  will  furnish  to  the  people  I 
of  the  United  States  this  much  needed  protection,  and*we  pledge  j 
ourselves  thereto. 

Conclusion. 

On  these  principles  and  on  the  recognized  desirability  of 
uniting  the  progressive  forces  of  the  nation  into  an  organization  ! 
which  shall  unequivocally  represent  the  progressive  spirit  and  , 


75 


policy,  we  appeal  for  the  support  of  all  American  citizens,  with¬ 
out  regard  to  previous  political  affiliations. 

(b)  COMMENTS  ON  THE  PROGRESSIVE  PARTY. 

(John  C.  Kennedy  in  the  Chicago  Daily  World,  August  7,  1912.) 

The  political  and  economic  program  of  the  Progressive  party 
is  obviously  designed  to  preserve  the  existing  industrial  order. 
Mr.  Roosevelt  himself  has  stated  that  his  program  is  in  the 
interests  of  the  business  men.  The  Progressive  party  indorses 
direct  primaries,  the  initiative,  the  referendum  and  the  recall. 
These  measures  are  all  desirable,  but  it  is  obvious  that  the 
reason  Mr.  Roosevelt  favors  them  is  that  he  and  his  fellow 
Progressives  must  do  so  in  order  to  defeat  the  political  machines 
which.  are  in  control  of  the  Republican  and  Democratic  reac¬ 
tionaries. 

If  the  Progressive  party  really  believes  in  democracy  it  will 
not  offer  us  a  few  measures  of  political  democracy  while  at  the 
same  time  it  advocates  benevolent  feudalism  in  industry.*  Polit¬ 
ical  democracy  can  be  secured  and  maintained  in  America  only 
when  we  have  industrial  democracy. 

A  BISMARCK  PROGRAM. 

The  economic  program  of  the  Progressive  party  is  supposed 
to  be  “an  antidote  to  anarchy  and*a  corrective  to  Socialism.” 
Bismarck,  the, Iron  Chancellor,  offered  a  similar  program  to  the 
German  nation  thirty  years  ago  as  “an  antidote  to  anarchy  and 
a  corrective  to  Socialism.”  The  program  was  not  only  offered, 
but  to  a  large  extent  it  has  actually  been  carried  out. 

The  German  workers  have  enjoyed  for  many  years  govern¬ 
ment  insurance  against  sickness,  accidents  and'invalidity,  as  well 
as  old  age  pensions.  They  are  protected  by  a  code  of  factory 
legislation  which  in  many  respects  is  superior  to  that  advocated 
by  the  Progressive  party.  Yet  the  Bismarck  program  did  not 
prove  to  be  a  “corrective  to  Socialism.”  When  Bismarck  first 
proposed  his  legislation  the  Socialist  party  of  Germany  polled 
fewer  than  500,000  votes.  In  the  general  election  last  January 
the  German  Socialist  party  polled  over  4,250,000  votes — more 
than  any  other  party  in  the  German  empire,  and  sent  110  So¬ 
cialist  representatives  to  the  German  Reichstag. 

The  Bismarck  program,  which  was  meant  to  preserve  the 
existing  capitalistic  order,  slightly  improved  the  condition  of 
workers  in  some  respects,  but  it  did  not  abolish  the  exploita¬ 
tion  of  the  working  class,  and  for  that  reason  the  Socialist  party 
has  continued  to  grow  in  strength. 

The  workers  of  Germany  were  not  deceived  by  the  Bismarck 
“corrective  to  Socialism,”  nor  will  the  American  workers  be 
fooled  by  Roosevelt’s  program  of  capitalistic  reform. 

WHO  ARE  RUNNING  THIS  “PEOPLE’S  PARTY?” 

If  the  Progressive  party  is  really  representative  of  the 
people,  is  it  not  strange  that  not  a  single  workingman  should 
be  found  among  the  delegates  at  its  convention?  The  workers 
and  farmers,  as  Mr.  Roosevelt  himself  declares,  constitute  nine- 
tenths  of  our  population,  and  yet  the  workers  and  the  farmers 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  actual  management  of  the  Pro¬ 
gressive  party. 

What  sort  of  a  democracy  is  this  where  the  people  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  running  of  their  own  affairs?  The  truth 
of  the  matter  is  that  the  Progressive  party  is  a  middle  class 
party,  which  promises  to  “hand  something  down”  to  the  work¬ 
ing  class 'and  to  prevent  the  capitalist  class  from  grinding  down 
the  workers  to  such  a  level  that  they  will  revolt  and  overturn 
the  whole  capitalist  system. 


Over  against  the  Progressive  party’s  program  of  capitalistic 
palliatives  and  reforms  calculated  to  bolster  utf  and  preserve  the 
present  industrial  system,  the  Socialist  party  offers  a  program 
which  strikes  at  the  root  of  the  exploitation  of  the  working 
class.  We  stand,  not  for  a  capitalistic  benevolent  feudalism, 
but  for  a  co-operative  industrial  democracy  in  which  the  indus¬ 
tries  will  be  owned  and  operated  by  the  government,  the  gov¬ 
ernment  being  controlled  by  the  workers. 

The  choice  between  the  Progressive  party  and  the  Socialist 
party  is  a  choice  between  industrial  feudalism  and  industrial 
democracy,  a  choice  between  a  Bismarck  program  designed  to 
preserve  the  capitalist  system  and  a  working  class  program 
designed  to  abolish  capitalist  exploitation  of  the  mass  of  the 
people. 


Why  the  Progressive  Party  Was  Organized. 

(Statement  by  Chairman  Hotchkiss  of  the  Progressive  Party 
April,  1913.) 

“In  such  a  party  rest  our  hopes  against  the  Socialist  and  the 
socialistic  state.  You  men  may  not  yet  fully  sense  the  danger. 
We  of  the  East  see  it,  feel  it.  The  forces  of  order,  the  rights 
of  states  forgotten,  all  the  powers  of  the  nation,  widened  and 
strengthened,  must  crytallize  about  or  fuse  with  this  party  of 
the  new  order  or  the  demagogue  of  the  day  may  be  the  demigod 
of  tomorrow.” 

George  W.  Perkins— “Angel”  of  the  Progressive  Party. 

(From  “Who’s  Who  in  America,”  1912.) 

“George  W.  Perkins;  financier;  became  partner  in  banking 
firm  of  J.  Pierpont  Morgan  &  Co.,  1901;  director,  Northern 
Securities  Company;  director,  International  Mercantile  Marine 
Company;  director,  United  States  Steel  Corporation;  chairman 
finance  committee  and  director  International  Harvester  Com¬ 
pany;  vice-president,  Great  Central  Dock  Company;  director, 
Erie  Railroad  Company;  director,  Astor  Trust  Company,  et 
cetera. 

Still  Clings  to  Capitalism. 

In  spite  of  its  seeming  radicalism,  in  spite  of  its  professed 
progressivism,  the  Progressive  party  still  clings  to  capitalism. 
In  the  face  of  'the  tremendous  problems  presented  by  the  mo¬ 
nopolies  and  trusts,  the  increasing  concentration  of  wealth  in 
the  hands  of  the  few,  the  ruthless  exploitation  of  labor,  and 
plunder  of  the  people  by  capitalism,  the  Progressive  party  still 
vainly  hopes  that  it  may  regulate  the  trusts.  The  Progressive 
party  has  nowhere  and  at  no  time  taken  a  clear  or  definite  stand 
for  the  public  ownership  of  public  utilities,  which  is  the  only 
possible  solution  of  '  the  problem.  The  utter  futility  of  the 
attempt  to  “regulate”  the  trusts  and  the  long  record  of  dismal 
failure  in  that  direction  we  treat  fully  in  the  pages  following, 
under  Section  5,  Subsection  (c),  under  the  caption  “Regulation 
a  Failure.” 

(c)  WEST  VIRGINIA  UNDER  A  PROGRESSIVE  GOV¬ 
ERNOR. 

(From  report  of  the  Socialist  Party  investigating  committee  on 
the  West  Virginia  Strike,  May  28,  1913.) 

“It  was  under  the  administration  of  Glasscock  (a  progressive, 
and  one  of  the  seven  governors  who  asked  Roosevelt  to  run 
for  president)  that  martial  law  was  declared;  that  the  military 
commission  was  created;  that  Mother  Jones,  John  Brown,  C. 
H.  Boswell  and  numerous  others  were  court-martialed  and  con- 


77 

victed;  and  nt  was  also  under  the  Glasscock  administration  that 
an  armored  train,  in  the  name  of  law  and  order,  shot  up  the 
cabins  and  tents  of  the  miners,  dealing  out  death  and  destruc¬ 
tion  under  cover  of  darkness,  an  outrage  so  infamous  that  it 
will  remain  forever  as  a  foul  and  indelible  blot  upon  the  state 
in  which  it  was  perpetrated.” 

For  the  story  of  the  strike  in  West  Virginia  see  Part  IV 
Strike”  12’  SubSeCti°n  (a)’  on  “West  Virginia  Coal  Miners’’ 

And  for  details  of  this  armored  train  and  its  murderous 
assault  upon  the  miners  see  article  in  Part  IV,  Section  11  Sub¬ 
section  (1),  on  “The  Private  Armies  of  Capitalism.” 


4.  The  Prohibition  Party. 


(a)  PROHIBITION  PLATFORM. 

Th5;  Prohibition  party  in  national  convention  at  Atlantic 
City,  N.  ].,  July  10,  1912,  recognizing  God  as  the  source  of  all 
governmental  authority,  makes  the  following  declaration  of 
principles  and  policies: 

1.  The  alcoholic  drink  traffic  is  wrong;  is  the  most  serious 
dram  on  the  wealth  and  resources  of  the  nation;  is  detrimental 
to  the  general  welfare  and  destructive  to  the  inalienable  rights 
ot  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  All  laws  taxing  or 
licensing  a  traffic  which  produces  crime,  poverty  and  political 
corruption,  and  spreads  disease  and  death  should  be  repealed 
To  destroy  such  a  traffic  there  must  be  elected  to  power  a 
political,  party  which  will  administer  the  government  from  the 
standpoint  that  the  alcoholic  drink  traffic  is  a  crime  and  not  a 
business,  and  we  pledge  that  the  manufacture,  importation 
exportation,  transportation  and  sale  of  alcoholic  beverages  shall 
be  prohibited. 


We  favor: 

2.  Suffrage  for  women  on  the  same  terms  as  for  men. 

3.  A  uniform  marriage  and  divorce  law.  The  extermination 
of  polygamy.  And  the  complete  suppression  of  the  traffic  in 
girls. 

4.  Absolute  protection  of  the  rights  of  labor,  without  im¬ 
pairment  of  the  rights  of  capital. 

5.  The  settlement  of  all  international  disputes  by  arbitra¬ 
tion. 

6.  The  abolition  of  child  labor  in  mines,  workshops  and 
factories,  with  the  rigid  enforcement  of  the  laws  now  flagrantly 
violated. 

7.  The  election  of  United  States  Senators  by  direct  vote 
of  the  people. 

8.  A  presidential  term  of  six  years,  and  one  term  only. 

9.  Court  review  of  postoffice  and  other  departmental  de¬ 
cisions  and  orders;  the  extension  of  the  postal  savings  bank 
system,  and  of  rural  delivery,  and  the  establishment  of  an 
efficient  parcel  post. 

10.  The  initiative,  referendum  and  recall. 

11.  As  the  tariff  is  a  commercial  question  it  should  be  fixed 
on  the  scientific  basis  of  accurate  knowledge,  secured  by  means 
of  a  permanent  omnipartisan  tariff  commission,  with  ampla 
powers. 

12.  Equitable  graduated  income  and  inheritance  taxes. 

13.  Conservation  of  our  forest  and  mineral  reserves,  and  the 
reclamation  of  waste  lands.  All  mineral  and  timber  lands,  and 
water  powers,  now  owned  by  the  government,  should  be  held 
permanently  and  leased  for  revenue  purposes. 

14.  Clearly  defined  laws  for  the  regulation  and  control  of 
corporations  transacting  an  interstate  business. 

15.  Efficiency  and  economy  in  governmental  administration. 


16.  The  protection  of  one  day  in  seven  as  a  day  of  rest. 

To  these  fundamental  principles,  the  National  Prohibition 
party  renews  its  long  allegiance,  and  on  these  issues  invites  the 
co-operation  of  all  good  citizens,  to  the  end  that  the  true  object 
of  government  may  be  attained,  namely,  equal  and  exact  justice 
for  all. 


(b)  PROHIBITION  VOTE  FOR  PRESIDENT  OF  THE 


UNITED 

STATES. 

1876  . 

.  9,522 

1896  . 

.  132,007 

1880  . 

.  10,305 

1900  . 

1884  . 

. 151,809 

1904  . 

.  258,536 

1888  . 

.  249,907 

1908  . 

.  253,840 

1892  . 

.  264,133 

1912  . 

.  206,275 

The  Prohibition  party  cast  more  votes  in  1888 — twenty-five 
years  ago— than  it  cast  in  1912. 


(c)  ATTITUDE  OF  SOCIALIST  PARTY  ON  THE 
LIQUOR  QUESTION. 

Resolutions  of  the  Socialist  Party  of  the  United  States 
on  Temperance. 

The  manufacture  and  sale  for  profit  of  intoxicating-  and 
adulterated  liquors  leads  directly  to  many  serious  social  evils. 
Intemperance  in  the  use  of  alcoholic  liquors  weakens  the  phys¬ 
ical,  mental  and  moral  powers.  • 

We  hold,  therefore,  that  any  excessive  indulgence  in  intoxi¬ 
cating  liquors  by  members  of  the  working  class  is  a  serious 
obstacle  to  the  triumph  of  our  class,  _since  it  impairs  the  vigor 
of  the  fighters  in  the  political  and  economic  struggle,  and  we 
urge  the  members  of  the  working  class  to  avoid  any  indulgence 
which  might  impair  their  ability  to  wage  a  successful  political 
and  economic  struggle,  and  so  hinder  the  progress  of  the  move¬ 
ment  for  their  emancipation. 

We  do  not  believe  that  the  evils  of  alcoholism  can  be  eradi¬ 
cated  by  repressive  measures  or  any  extension  of  the  police 
powers  of  the  capitalist  state — alcoholism  is  a  disease  of  which 
capitalism  is  the  chief  cause.  Poverty,  overwork  and  overworry 
necessarily  result  in  intemperance  on  the  part  of  the  victims. 
To  abolish  the  wage  system  with  all  its  evils  is  the  surest  way 
to  eliminate  the  evils  of  alcoholism  and  the  traffic  in  intoxicat¬ 
ing  liquor. — Adopted  by  the  National  Convention  of  the  Social¬ 
ist  Party  at  Indianapolis,  Ind.,  May,  1912. 

(d)  ATTITUDE  OF  SOME  EUROPEAN  SOCIALIST 
PARTIES  ON  THE  LIQUOR  PROBLEM. 

Norwegian. 

“War  against  the  liquor  traffic,  through  legislation  that  shall 
conclude  in  national  prohibition.” — (Plank  in  Norwegian  So¬ 
cialist  Platform,  adopted  in  1911  and  1912.) 

Finnish. 

“General  prohibition  of  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  alcoholic 
beverages.” — (Plank  from  Socialist  Platform  of  Finland, 
adopted  in  1903  and  1906.) 

Swedish. 

“Promotion  of  the  temperance  movement  through  education 
in  all  public  schools,  as  to  nature  and  effects  of  alcohol  and  the 
support  of  practical  temperance  legislation.”— (Plank  from 
Swedish  Socialist  Platform,  adopted  in  1905.) 


79 


(e)  INTEMPERANCE  NOT  THE  CHIEF  CAUSE  OF 
POVERTY. 

Economic  Conditions,  Not  Intemperance,  the  Chief  Cause  of 

Poverty. 

(From  article  on  “Poverty,”  Bliss’  Encyclopedia  of  Social 
Reform.) 

The  causes  of  poverty  are  of  necessity  so  numerous  and 
complex  that  sociologists  today  no  longer  attempt  to  analyze 
them  or  state  them,  and  much  less  venture  opinion  as  to  how 
far  different  causes  contribute  to  results.  The  most  that  can  be 
done,  scientifically,  is  to  say  that  such  and  such  causes  tend  to 
produce  poverty,  and  that  some  causes-  seem  to  be  more  poten¬ 
tial  than  others.  Life,  as  it  affects  poverty,  is  seen  today  to  be 
too  complex  for  statistical  or  any  form  of  exact  analysis. 

Perhaps  the  nearest  approach  to  a  scientific  tabulation  and 
valuation  of  different  .pauses  is  the  one  made  in  1894  by  Prof. 
A.  G.  Warner,  and  published  in  his  “American  Charities.”  He 
has  collected  and  tabulated  the  results  of  investigations  into  the 
causes  of  thousands  of  actual  cases  of  poverty  in  the  United 
States,  England  and  Germany.  His  table  includes  practically 
all  the  findings,  as  to  actual  cases  of  poverty,  made  in  a  scientific 
way  by  trained  investigators,  and  embodies  the  result  of  investi¬ 
gations  by  the  charity  organization  societies  of  Baltimore,  Buf¬ 
falo  and  New  York  City,  the  associated  charities  of  Boston  and 
Cincinnati,  the  studies  of  Charles  Booth  in  Stepney  and  St. 
Pancras  parishes  in  London,  the  statements  of  Bomert  (“Ar- 
menwesen  in  76  Deutschen  Stadten”)  for  seventy-six  German 
cities,  published  in  1886.  It  will  be  seen  that  here,  if  anywhere, 
we  have  a  scientific  analysis  of  the  facts  of  the  case,  as  collected 
by  persons  without  particular  bias.  *  *  * 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  table  that  the  chief  single  cause  of 
poverty  as  here  studied  is  sickness  or  death  in  the  families  of 
the  poor.  Lack  of  work  stands  second,  although  if  the  averages 
as  to  lack  of  work,  insufficient  work  and  poorly  paid  work  be 
added  together,  as  well  they  might  be,  they  form  the  supreme 
cause  of  poverty.  Drink  stands  third,  though  only  one-half  as 
great  a  cause  as  unemployment.  Says  Prof.  Warner  (pages  60 
and  65) : 

“Probably  nothing  in  the  tables  of  the  causes  of  poverty,  as 
ascertained  by  cold  counting,  will  more  surprise  the  average 
reader  than  the  fact  thast  intemperance  is  held  to  be  the  chief 
cause  in  only  from  one-fiftpenth  to  one-fifth  of  the  cases,  and 
that  where  an  attempt  is  made  to  learn  in  how  many  cases  it 
had  a  contributory  influence,  its  presence  cannot  be  traced  at 
all  in  more  than  28.1  per  cent  of  the  cases.  (See  Intemperance.) 
Professor  Warner  sums  up  the  case  by  saying:  “The  general 
conclusion  regarding  drink  as  a  cause  of  poverty  is  sufficiently 
well  formulated  by  Mr.  Booth.  ‘Of  drink  in  all  its  combina¬ 
tions*  adding  to  every  trouble,  undermining  every  effort  after 
good,  destroying  the  home  and  cursing  the  young  lives  of  chil¬ 
dren,  the  stories  tell  enough.  It  does  not  stand  an  apparent 
chief  cause  in  as  many  cases  as  sickness  and  old  age;  but  if  it 
were  not  for  drink,  sickness  and  old  age  would  be  better  met’.” 

It  will  also  be  seen  from  the  table,  that  causes  indicating 
misconduct  average  only  21.3  per  cent,  while  causes  indicating 
misfortune  average  74.4,  or  over  three  times  as  much.  Four  per 
cent  of  the  cases  are  not  classified;  but  the  causes  indicated  as 
unclassified  belong  to  causes  indicating  misfortune  much  more 
than  misconduct,  at  least  as  far  as  the  individual  studied  is 
concerned. 


80 


(f) 

(Frances 

W. 


FRANCES  E.  WILLARD  ON  SOCIALISM. 

E.  -W^larcl,  in  her  presidential  address  before 
U.  in  London,  June,  1895;  Encyclopedia 
Social  Reform.) 


C.  T. 


the 


For  myself,  twenty-one  years  of  study  and  observation  have 
convmced  me  that  poverty  is-  a  prime  cause  of  intemperance 

"“drink  hallucination.  in°ther  “d  apP*ite  the 

,  thCf  1!b0r  ref°rmer  1  have  t0  say.  you  have  united  for 

ome  protection;  so  have  we.  You  will  bring  it  about  by  stand- 

\nf  ^eth^r  at  the  ballot  box;  so  shall  we.  In  the  slums  they 
drink  to  forget;  we  would  make  life  something  they  would 
gladly  remember.  We  once  said  intemperance  was  the  cause 
ol  poverty;  now  we  have  completed  the  circle  of  truth  by  sav¬ 
ing  poverty  is  the  cause  of  intemperance,  and  that  the  under¬ 
paid,  underfed,  undersheltered,  wage-earning  teetotaler  deserves 
a  thousand  times  more  credit  than  the  teetotaler  that  is  well  fed 
well  paid  and  well  cared  for.  Our  objects  are  the  same.  Let 
us  clasp  hands  in  the  unity  of  the  spirit  and  the  bond  of  peace. 

Ten  years  ago  I  could  not  have  said  it  honestly,  five  years 
ago  I  could  not  .have  said  it  hopefully,  but  now  I  fearlessly 
dedare  it  to  be  the  right  and  duty  of  white  ribbon  women  to 
help  abolish  poverty  in  the  largest  sense  of  that  great  phrase* 
but  I  must  in  the  same  breath  ask  our  friends  of  the  labor 
movement  to  recognize  that  our  special  work  for  the  abolition 
of  poverty  consists  in  the  abolition  of  the  public  house  and  the 
saloon. 

(From  Address  at  the  National  W.  C.  T.  U.  Convention  at 
Buffalo  in  1897.) 


Look  about  you;  the  products  of  labor  are  on  every  hand; 
you  could  not  maintain  for  a  moment  a  well-ordered  life  with¬ 
out  them;  every  object  in  your  room  has  in  it,  for  discerning 
eyes,  the  mark  of  ingenious  tools  and  the  pressure  of  labor's 
hands.  But  is  it  not  the  crudest  injustice  for  the  wealthy,  whose 
lives  are  surrounded  and  embellished  by  labor’s  work,  to  have 
a  superabundance  of  the  money  which  represents  the  aggregate 
of  labor  in  any  country,  while  the  laborer  himself  is  kept  so 
steady  at  work  that  he  has  no  time  to  acquire  the  education 
and  refinements  of  life  that  would  make  him  and  his  family 
agreeable  companions  ito  the  rich  and  cultured? 

The  reason  why  I  am  a  Socialist  comes  in  just  here. 

I  would  take,  not  by  force,  but  by  the  slow  process  of  lawful 
acquisition  through  better  legislation,  as  the  outcome  of  a 
wiser  ballot  in  the  hands  of  men  and  women,  the  entire  plant 
that  we  call  civilization,  all  that  has  been  achieved  on  this 
continent  in  the  four  hundred  years  since  Columbus  wended 
his  way  hither,  and  make  it  the  common  property  of  all  the 
people,  requiring  all  to  work  enough  with  their  hands  to  give 
them  the  finest  physical  development,  but  not  to  become  burden¬ 
some  in  any  case,  and  permitting  all  to  share  alike  the  advant¬ 
ages  of  education  and  refinement.  I  believe  this  to  be  perfectly 
practical,  indeed,  that  any  other  method  is  simply  a  relic  of 
barbarism. 

I  believe  that  competition  is  doomed.  The  trust,  whose 
single  object  is  to  abolish  competition,  has  proved  that  we  are 
better  without  than  with  it,  and  the  moment  corporations  con¬ 
trol  the  supply  of  any  product,  they  combine.  What  the  Social¬ 
ist  desires  is  that  the  corporation  of  humanity  should  control 
all  production.  Beloved  comrades,  this  is  the  frictionless  way; 
it  is  the  higher  way;  it  eliminates  the  motives  for  a  selfish  life ; 
it  enacts  into  our  every-day  living  the  ethics  of  Christ’s  gospel. 


81 


Nothing  else  will  do  it;  nothing  else  can  bring  the  glad  day  of 
universal  brotherhood. 


Oh, ^  that  I  were  young  again,  and  it  would  have  my  life!  It 
is  God’s  way  out  of  the  wilderness  and  into  the  promised  land 
It  is  the  very  marrow  of  Christ’s  gospel.  It  is  Christianity 

applied. 


State  of  Illinois, 

County  of  Cook.  ss. 

Winnie  E.  Branstetter,  being  first  duly  sworn,  says  that  she 
personally  visited  the  National  Headquarters  of  the  Woman’s 
Christian  Temperance  Union,  at  Evanston,  Illinois. 

Affiant  further  says  that  she  has  carefully  examined  the  rec¬ 
ords  at  the  aforesaid  office  of  the  Woman’s  Christian  Temper- 
ance  Union,  and  states  that  the  language  attributed  to  Frances 

F™aF  w:‘n  6  hr.ed.’reaflet’  iS  the  knsua^  as  spoken  by 
Frances  E.  Willard  at  the  National  Convention  of  the  Woman’s 

Christian  Temperance  Union  held  in  1897,  befng  quoted  from 
pages  118,  119,  121,  142  and  153  of  the  official  record  of  the  pro- 
ceedings  of  said  convention. 

WINNIE  E.  BRANSTETTER. 
Subscribed  and  sworn  to  before  me  this  12th  day  of  July, 

'  1913,  (Signed)  JAS.  P.  LARSEN, 

(Seal)  Notary  Public. 

On  the  evils  of  intemperance  and  the  consumption  of  alco¬ 
holic  liquors  in  the  United  States,  see  Part  V,  section  15 


5.  The  Futility  of  the  Old  Party  Remedies. 

(a)  THE  CAPITALIST  ISSUES  ARE  SHAM  ISSUES. 


(From  the  speech  of  Hon.  Victor  L.  Berger,  of  Wisconsin,  in 
the  House  of  Representatives,  Thursday,  July  18,  1912.) 

The  working  class  has  nothing  to  hope  for  from  either  the 
-Republican  party  or  the  Democratic  party.  The  representa¬ 
tives  of  these  parties  may  be,  and  very  often  are,  very  cul¬ 
tured  and  accomplished  gentleman.  Most  of  them  are  person¬ 
ally  honest.  However,  they  represent  the  capitalist  system; 
and  the  more  honest  and  consistent  they  are,  the  more  loyal 
they  are  to  them  class.  J 

And  the  two  parties  may  fight  about  the  spoils  of  this  system 
but  neither  of  them  is  willing  to  change  the  economic  basis 
ot  the  present  society. 

It  is,  therefore,  only  natural  that  every  law  passed  by  the 
Republican  or  Democratic  party  benefits  the  capitalist  class, 
or  some  group  of  it,  in  some  manner— even  laws  that  obviously 
seem  to  favor  the  workers,  like  the  workmen’s  compensation  act. 


What  the  Two  Old  Parties  Represent. 


Political  parties  are  simply  the  expressions  of  economic 
interests. 

The  Republican  party  is  the  favorite  organization  of  the  big 
capitalists.  Why?  Because  it  stood  for  a  great  deal  of  “busi¬ 
ness  during  the  late  Civil  War,  and  because,  by  its  high-tariff 
proclivities  and  its  banking  laws,  it  has  given  a  strong  impetus 
to  the  profits  of  the  manufacturers  and  bankers.  [Applause  on 
the  Democratic  side.] 

For  a  generation  it  was  considered  the  conservative  business 
man  s  party  of  the  country. 

The  Democratic  party,  in  its  great  majority,  stood  for  the 
economic  and  political  interests  of  the  slave  owners  before  the 
Civil  War  After  -the  war  it  naturally  has  become  the  dominant 
party  of  the  South,  where  the  former  slave  owner  is  slowly 
getting  to  be  a  manufacturer,  a  banker,  or  a  capitalist.  Up 


82 


North  the  Democratic  party,  not  having  any  great  economic 
interests  to  express,  soon  fell  into  the  hands  of  corrupt  ma¬ 
chines,  at  least  in  the  large  icities.  Thus  we  have  Tammany  in 
New  York,  the  Cook  County  Democracy  in  Chicago,  the  Rose 
Democracy  in  Milwaukee,  and  other  benevolent  graft  institu¬ 
tions.  It  naturally  also  became  the  favorite  organization  of  the 
liquor  interests  in  the  Northern  States.  [Applause  on  the  Re¬ 
publican  side.] 

The  capitalist  class,  therefore,  is  just  as  willing  to  deal  with 
the  Democratic  party  as  with  the  Republican  party.  While  the 
latter  is  conservative,  the  Democratic  party  is,  to  all  intents  and 
purposes,  reactionary,  especially  on  the  industrial  field;  it  would 
like  to  go  back  to  the  days  before  the  war.  #  Being  behind  the 
times  in  most  things,  it  is  especially  ignorant  and  brutal  in 
regard  to  the  labor  question,  as  the  laws  of  many  Southern 
States  prove. 


The  Tariff  and  Labor. 


As  to  the  tariff  issue  as  such,  this  issue  is  to  the  working 
class  exactly  what  every  other  capitalist  issue  is.  The  work¬ 
ingmen  are  interested  in  the  tariff — as  the  tariff  is  now — as 
consumers  only. 

The  tariff  does  not  protect  labor;  at  the  same  time  any  sud¬ 
den  change  would  be  disastrous.  It  is  mainly  a  manufacturers* 
issue — until  labor  really  gets  its  share  of  the  protection. 

The  tariff  is  not  responsible  for  the  trusts;  there  are  trusts 
in  England,  where  they  have  free  trade.  Moreover,  the  trusts 
are  now  in  favor  of  free  trade. 


The  Real  Issue  for  the  Working  Class. 


With  us  the  great  issue  is  the  difference  between  what  a 
worgingman  in  this  country  produces  on  the  average  and  what 
he  gets. 

It  is  a  class  issue;  it  is  the  great  issue  of  the  working  class. 

In  1909,  in  the  268,000  factories  of  this  Nation,  6,600,000 
wage  earners  added  $1,290  apiece  for  every  worker  employed. 

Did  those  workers  receive  the  value  they  put  into  the  prod¬ 
uct?  Not  at  all.  They  received  $518  apiece. 

The  other  $772  went  to  the  employers  and  landowners.  This 
surplus  value  went  to  the  capitalist  class  as  such — to  the  land- 
owners,  the  bankers,  and  employers,  and  the  holders  of  special 
privileges  of  some  sort  or  another. 

Wherever  this  surplus  value  goes  it  goes  to  some  individuals 
or  groups  of  the  capitalist  class  in  ‘some  form — either  as  profit, 
rent,  interest,  insurance,  and  so  forth. 

The  Relative  Share  of  the  Worker  is  Getting  Smaller. 

Wage  earners  received  more  money  in  1909  than  they  did  in 
1904.  Their  average  in  the  former  year  was  $477,  in  the  ’latter 
year  $518,  a  difference  of  $41,  or  about  79  'cents  a  week.  The 
figures  of  wages  are  not  yet  classified  for  men,  women,  and 
children,  and  so  we  cannot  tell  where  the  greater  rate  of 
increase  has  gone,  though  the  probability  is  that  it  has  gone  to 
the  men. 

The  value  added  to  production  (that  is,  the  value  of  the  prod¬ 
uct  less  the  cost  of  materials)  averaged  $1,150  for  each  wage 
earner  in  1904.  It  now  averages  $1,290.  But  the  relative  share 
of  the  worker  in  the  value  of  his  product  is  less  than  it  was  in 
either  1899  or  1904. 


Here  are  the  comparative  figures: 


Net  Workers 


production  share 

Per  cent. 


Wages 


Year. 


$1,025  41.6 

1,150  41.5 

1,290  40.1 


1899 

1904 

1909 


Insecurity  of  Employment. 

One  of  the  particularly  brutal  elements  of  capitalism  is  shown 
by  the  figures  for  the  seasonal  variations  in  the  amount  of  em- 


ployment  in  the  various  great  industries.  Capital  cannot  keep 

its  workers  Pmnlnvprl  ** 


n 


But  in  brick  and  tile  making  the  minimum  represented  only 

S  ner  ppnt-  rtf  ftio 


o  — ■ lcpie: 

dt>.5  per  cent  of  the  maximum,  and  in  canning  and 
only  12.9  per  cent. 


preserving 


~  - -  me  nuiiioer  em 

ployed  in  March  was  25  per  cent  less  than  that  employed  i 
December.  Throughout  the  whole  industrial  scheme  seasons 
unemployment  is  a  necessity  under  capitalism. 


We  Look  Upon  Tariff  Issue  As  a  Sham  Battle. 

Under  these  circumstances,  is  it  surprising  that  we'  look  upon 
the  agitation  for  a  low  tariff  or  for  a  high  tariff  as  a  shameless 
humbug  when  we  compare  its  importance  with  the  question  of 
the  exploitation  of  labor,? 

Is  it  surprising  that  we  look  upon  the  return  of  tariff  issue 
as  simply  a  sham  battle  to  divert  the  attention  of  the  working¬ 
men  from  the  main  issue? 

* 

(c)  BUSTING  THE  TRUSTS  A  FAILURE. 

(From  Bliss’  Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform;  article  oh  Trusts.) 

Almost  every  state  in  the  U.  S.  and  the  federal  govern¬ 
ment  in  two  main  bills  has  attempted' legislation  against  trusts. 
Yet  the  movement  has  .  only  gone  on  increasing.  When  the 
Standard  Oil  Trust  was  declared  illegal  in  Ohio,  it  continued 
with  even  greater  power  under  a  new  name,  while  its  connec¬ 
tions,  assuming  different  names  in  different  states  to  avoid  the 
law,  virtually  form  a  single  body.  So,  at  less  extent,  with 
the  other  trusts. 

The  first  general  federal  law  which  can  be  regarded  as  a 
result  of  the  trust  agitation  was  the  Interstate .  Commerce  Act 
passed  in  1887.  The  act  was  the  outgrowth  of  the  sentiment 
which  had  been  created  during  the  previous  years  by  tne  gen¬ 
eral  cutting  of  rates  by  the  railroads,  vand  their  inequitable 
dealings  with  shippers  in  all  parts  of  the  country.  The  rela¬ 
tions  of  the  railroads  with  the  Standard  Oil  Trust  were  matters 
of  particular  criticism  at  this  time,  and  the  immediate  purpose 
of  the  act  was  mainly  to  eliminate  the  illegal  discriminations 
in  favor  of  the  Standard  and,  if  possible,  give  all  shippers  the 
same  opportunities. 

The  Interstate  Commerce  Law  has  now  been  in  existence 
for  twenty  years,  but  its  results  have  in  no  way  verified  the 
predictions  of  its  framers.  Recently  its  powers  have  been 
largely  widened  and  prosecutions  against  the  Standard  Oil 
monoply  trust  have  been  begun,  and  several  have  been  suc¬ 
cessful  to  the  extent  of  imposing  fines  running  into  many  mil¬ 
lions.  But  these  have  been  usually  subject  to  appeal  to  Su¬ 
preme  Court,  while  few  believe  they  ican  break  up  the  move¬ 


ment. 


A  measure  which  was  created  in  1890,  and  is  popularly 
known  as  the  Sherman  Anti-trust  Act,  is  the  law  which  was 
passed  for  the  express  purpose  of  eliminating  monoply  in 
railroads  or  other  corporations  which  may  become  established 
“in  restraint  of  trade.”  It  is  the  law  under  which  .the  Northern 
Securities  Company  was  sued  by  the  Attorney-General  of  the 
U.  S.  and  declared  illegal.  The  law  declares  unlawful  every 
contract,  combination  or  conspiracy  in  restraint  of  trade  or 


J 


j 


84 

commerce  among  the  several  states  or  with  foreign  nations; 
and  also  declares  unlawful  monopolies,  and  any  attempt  to 
monopolize,  or  any  combination  or  conspiracy  to  monopolize 
any  interstate  or  international  trade. 

The  law  has  been  in  effect  now  fifteen  years  and,  with  the 
exception  of  the  Northern  Securities  Company  case,  has 
accomplished,  at  least  until  recently,  practically  nothing.  Of 
the  final  result  of  the  'recent  prosecutions  it  is  too  early  to 
speak  definitely.  Most  of  the  great  trusts,  however,  have  bpen 
formed  since  the  passage  of  the  law,  and  in  spite  of  it,  and 
most  publicists  believe  that  while  perhaps  some  of  the  more 
apparent  and  grosser  violations  of  the  law  may  be  prevented 
by  such  legislation,  the  essence,  if  not  the  necessity  of  trusts, 
has  too  deep  a  foundation  in  economic  interest  and  practical 
common  sense  to  be  permanently  and  seriously  affected  by 
such  laws.1*  Colossal  industries  cannot  by  law  be  compelled 
to  compete,  only  prevented  from  continuing  in  certain  ways. 

Dissolution  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company. 

The  story  of  the  sudden  concentration  following  immediately 
upon  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  ordering  the  dissolu¬ 
tion  of  the  trust  is  told  by  Mr.  Albert  W.  Atwood  in  the  Mc¬ 
Clure  Magazine  for  August,  1912.  Mr.  Atwood  says,  in  speak¬ 
ing  of  one  of  the  results,  that  the  small  stockholders  in  the 
company  were  practically  wiped  out. 

“In  one  company,”  he  says,  “the  extent  of  the  falling  off  has 
been  definitely  shown.  The  Standard  Oil  subsidiary  sent  out, 
in  January,  sixty-one  hundred  checks  of  dividends.  In  April, 
when  the  next  dividend  was  declared,  the  number  of  stock¬ 
holders  had  decreased  to  two  thousand  (from  6,100  reduced  to 
2,000).” 

The  specialists  in  Standard  Oil  stocks  on  Wall  Street  all 
agree  on  this  elimination  of  small  stockholders.  In  many  com¬ 
panies,  they  say,  six  or  seven  hundred  .stockholders  dropped 
out  immediately.  The  great  stockholders,  even  if  they  have  not 
bought  stock,  have  certainly  not  sold. 

But  the  speculation  or  even  the  dropping  of  shares  by  the 
small  stockholders  is  not  the  main  consideration  in  any  real 
estimate  of  the  whole  transaction.  All  this  happened,  it  is 
true,  but  the  action  of  the  United  States  went  further  than 
this.  Even  if  the  small  stockholder  had  retained  his  holdings, 
whatever  voice  he  could  have  had  in  the  properties  was  auto¬ 
matically  taken  away  from,  him  by  the  action  of  the  govern¬ 
ment. 

Immediately  upon  the  dissolution  of  the  main  holding  com¬ 
pany,  it  was  decided,  for  self-evident  reasons,  that  nothing  less 
than  one  full  share  of  any  stock  should  have  a  vote  in  any  of 
the  concerns.  Now,  the  ownership  of  one  share  of  Washington 
Oil  would  have  required  the  ownership  of  fourteen  hundred 
shares  of  the  old  Standard  Oil  stock— an  investment  of  a  mil¬ 
lion  dollars.  Five  hundred  shares  of  the  old  stock  would  have 
been  needed  to  own  one  share  of  the  Borne-Scrymser,  an 
investment  of  $350,000;  nearly  a  hundred  .shares  to  own  one 
share  of  Standard  Oil  of  Indiana.  There  was  only  one  possible 
result:  In  most  of  the  new  concerns,  a  full  half  of  the  stock¬ 
holders  of  the  old  Standard  Oil  Company  were  at  once  deprived 
of  their  vote;  in  many  of  the  new  concerns,  four-fifths  of  them 
lost  their  voting  power.  Atwood  says: 

“How  the  sale  of  the  stock,  and  the  deprivation  of  small 
stockholders  of  their  voting  rights,  have  together  acted  to 
concentrate  *the  power  of  the  ‘insiders  over  the  Standard  Oil 
properties,  is  well  shown  by  the  great  Standard  Oil  Company 
of  Indiana,  in  which  the  most  spectacular  ‘killing’  took  place. 
A  year  ago  it  had  controlling  it  the  six  thousand  stockholders 
of  the  Standard  Oil;  this  spring  it  had  fewer  than  nine  hun- 


85 


dred  and  fifty  stockholders  eligible  to  vote;  five-sixths  of  its 
voting  stockholders  had  disappeared. 

“So,  then,  the  immediate  effect  of  the  government’s,  action 
is  this:  It  has  eliminated  the  small  stockholders,  and  has  con¬ 
centrated  the  ownership  and  control  of  the  Standard  Oil  Com¬ 
pany  more  than  years  of  normal  commercial  development  could 
have  done. 

“John  D.  Rockefeller  holds  in  his  name,  as  is  shown  by  the 
figures  of  as  recent  date  as  this  spring,  one-quarter  of  the  stock 
in  all  of  the  Standard  Oil  properties;  six  other  individuals  and 
estates  hold  a  little  over  a  quarter  more;  around  them  is  a 
larger  group  of  great  holders  of  stock;  and  further  down  come 
the  associates  and  active  managers  who  are  directing  the  busi¬ 
ness.  These  men,  especially  the  half  dozen  interests  which  own 
a  majority  'control — 'consider  the  Standard  Oil  as  much  their 
private  property  as  a  family  horse.’’ 

Thus,  the  result  of  this  much  heralded  victory  on  the  part 
of  our  reformers  who  propose  either  to  regulate  or  to  bust  the 
trust  is,  that  the  Standard  Oil  trust  is  bigger  and  mightier 
today  than  it  ever  has  been  before.  And  the  concentration  of 
its  ownership,  and  the  development  of  its  power  has  never  been 
so  swift  and  certain  as  during  the  very  months  when  the  Gov¬ 
ernment  was  supposed  to  have  won  its  most  signal  victory. 

Such  is  the  final  result  of  four  and  one-half  years  of  litiga¬ 
tion  on  the  part  of  the  United  States  Government  against  the 
Standard  Oil  Company;  and  such  is  the  substance  of  the  story 
that  has  taken  eleven  and  a  half  millions  of  words  of  testimony 
for  the  Government  to  state. 

From  the  Literary  Digest  of  June  15,  1912,  we  take  the  fol¬ 
lowing: 

“In  the  New  York  Herald  we  read: 

“The  Federal  authorities  made  their  best  efforts  and  operated 
under  the  most  stringent  laws  on  the  books  to  abolish  this 
fattest  of  trusts.  The  result  was  a  paper  victory  for  the  people. 
The  real  victory,  it  is  now  admitted  by  Mr.  Rockefeller,  was  won 
by  the  oil  company,  which  is  run  in  practically  the  same  old 
way,  by  the  same  old  men,  With  profits  even  greater  than 
formerly.” 

A  lawyer  connected  with  this  case  estimates  “from  fairly 
exhaustive  data,”  we  read  in  the  New  York  World,  that  Mr. 
Rockefeller’s  fortune  now  amounts  to  $900,000,000,  and  that 
it  has  increased  $100,000,000  since  the  dissolution  of  Standard 

Oil. 

The  New  York  Evening  Journal  notes  that  before  its  dis¬ 
solution  the  Standard  Oil  Trust  was  worth  “just  about  $321,- 
000,000  less  than  it  is  worth  now,”  and  it  goes  on  to  sav: 

“When  you  compel  a  Tobacco  Trust  or  a  Standard  Oil  Trust 
to  dissolve,  what  do  you  do? 

“You  give  the  insiders  a  chance  to  make  millions  at  the 
expense  of  innocent  stockholders. 

“Some  of  these  separate  Standard  Oil  concerns  have  jumped 
up  to  the  most  phenomenal  prices  of  $2,000  and  $3,000,  and 
even  $6,500  a  share. 

“Can  you  imagine  which  particular  individual  knew  what 
would  happen? 

“Don’t  you  know  that  the  insiders,  the  men  who  control  the 
trust,  knew  perfectly  well  that  one  particular  subsidiary  concern 
was  valuable,  and  that  another  particular  concern  was  running 
at  a  loss  or  small  profit?  . 

“As  long  as  the  trust  was  run  all  as  one  concern  the  stock¬ 
holder  of  the  trust  stock  got  his  part  of  the  profit  from  every¬ 
thing. 

“When  you  divide  it  up  you  find  a  few  big,  rich  men  holding 
the  valuable  parts  in  their  hands  and  getting  all  the  profit,  and 


the  poor,  silly  fools— the  public— holding  in  their  little  pockets 
the  worthless  stuff. 

(From  The  Literary  Digest,  April  4,  1914.) 

A  sign  of  the  times  with  Standard  Oil,  we  are  informed,  is 
that  while  many  Wall  Street  brokers  have  been  laying  off 
employes,  dealers  in  Standard  Oil  subsidiary  shares  have  in 
some  offices  doubled  their  payroll  and  kept  their  people  busy 
until  nine  in  the  evening.  Since  the  dissolution  of  the  Standard 
Oil  Company  two  years  ago  those  shareholders  of  the  old  New 
Jersey  company,  says  The  Wall  Street  Journal,  who  have  held 
on  to  all  their  fractions  have  benefited  during  that  period  of 
the  appreciation  in  the  market  value  of  the  companies’  share* 
and  of  the  cash  dividends  paid,  and  this  paper  adds: 

“These  indicate  a  total  profit  in  Standard  Oil  shares  since 
the  dissolution  of  at  least  115  per  cent.  On  December  15,  1911, 
Standard  Oil  stock,  which  included  the  New  Jersey  company 
and  all  subsidiaries,  sold  at  $640  a  share  while  today  these 
shares  ar^  quoted  around  $1,230,  an  increase  of  $590  a  share,  or 
over  90  per  cent.  Cash  dividends  paid  by  Standard  Oil  Com¬ 
panies  during  the  past  two  years  have  aggregated  more  than 
$160,000,000,  equivalent  to  over  160  per  cent  on  the  capital  stock 
of  the  Standard  Oil  Company  of  New  Jersey,  and  equivalent 
to  over  25  per  cent  on  the  investment  in  the  old  shares  at 
$640.  ... 

“A  review  of  the  thirty-four  companies  included  in  the 
Standard  Oil  group  for  1913,  the  second  year  of  restored  com¬ 
petition  between  these  companies  under  the  watchful  eye  of  the 
Washington  Government,  discloses  a  state  of  prosperity  prob¬ 
ably  unequalled  by  apy  other  group  of  companies  in  the  United 
States.” 

Smashing  the  Tobacco  Trust. 

(From  The  Literary  Digest,  June  15,  1912.) 

Turning  to  the  litigation  which  has  dragged  the  Tobacco 
Trust  again  into  the  limelight,,  beside  the  Standard  Oil  octopus, 
we  read  that  it  is  a  suit  brought  by,  an  independent  tobacco 
concern,  E.  Locker  &  Co.,  against  the  American  Tobacco  Com¬ 
pany,  the  Liggett  &  Myers  Tobacco  Company,  and  the  P.  Loril- 
lard  Company.  The  petition  claims  that  despite  the  dissolution 
decree,  these  companies  are  doing  business  virtually  as  the  same 
old  Tobacco  Trust  and  employing  the  same  old  methods  to 
crush  independent  dealers. 

Referring  ironically  to  the  efforts  of  the  officers  of  the  com¬ 
panies  which  once  made  up  the  trust  to  restore  competition 
between  these  companies,  the  petition  says: 

“One  of  the  means  employed  by  them  in  their  earnest  efforts 
to  restore  so-called  competition  is  for  four  of  the  big  companies 
to  come  into  a  territory,  apparently  to  compete  with  each  other, 
but  in  reality  to  attack  the  common  enemy — that  is,  the  inde¬ 
pendent  manufacturer — simultaneously,  and  from  all  sides;  so 
that  whereas  the  independent  tobacco  people  had  a  fighting 
chance  before,  when  attacked  by  one  trust,  their  annihilation 
is  now  a  matter  of  certainty,  for  who  can  withstand  a  simulta¬ 
neous  attack  of  four  trusts  operating  in  obncert  and  at  the  same 
time?  And  so  there  have  been  more  failures  of  independent 
tobacco  jobbers  in  this  city  within  the  last  few  months,  since 
these  new  companies  have  started  out  to  restore  competition, 
than  there  have  been  in  so  many  years.” 

(From  “Concentration  and  Control,”  by  Charles  R.  Van  Hise, 
pages  184-185,  published  by  The  Macmillan  Company.) 

In  accordance  with  the  decree  and  order  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States,  the  Circuit  Court  of  the  United 


/ 


87 

States  for  the  Southern  District  of  New  York,  on  November  6, 
1911,  approved  a  plan  for  disintegrating  the  American  Tobacco 
Company. 

The  stock  of  the  American  Tobacco  Company  was,  in  a 
manner  like  that  of  Standard  Oil,  distributed  proportionally 
to  his  holdings  to  each  stockholder  of  the  fourteen  companies. 
There  were  twenty-nine  men  who  held  a  dominating  position 
in  the  old  corporation,  and  they  in  like  manner  hold  a  dominat¬ 
ing  position  in  the  three  new  companies  into  which  the  chief 
assets  of  the  old  company  have  been  divided. 

In  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Louis  Brandeis,  one  of  the  counsel  for 
the  independent  companies,  the  order  to  disintegrate  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Tobacco  Company  will  prove  to  be  a  farce.  He  says  that 
not  only  was  the  tobacco  business  distributed  among  three  com¬ 
panies,  but  the  part  of  the  business  which  was  assigned  to  each 
company  was  such  as  to  give  them  substantial  monopoly  for 
important  lines  of  business  assigned  to  them.  Mr.  Felix  H. 
Levy,  another  of  the  attorneys  of  the  independent  companies, 
says  the  plan  of  disintegration  “is  a  sham  and  subterfuge/' 
Mr.  Samuel  Untermeyer  says:  “They  have  simply  changed  its 
clothes,  that  is  all;  and  they  have  not  made  a  very  complete 
change  at  that.” 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  now  have  fourteen  tobacco  com¬ 
binations  which  have  the  sanction  of  the  courts  instead  of  one 
that  did  not.  It  is  notable  that  after  the  order  was  given  by  the 
Supreme  Court  to  dissolve  the  corporation,  the  stock  of  the 
American  Tobacco  Company  fell  to  390  per  share;  but  that  after 
the.  decision  of  the  Circuit  Court  as  to  the  kind  of  disintegration 
which  was  to  take  place,  the  common  stock  rose  to  as  high  a 
price  as  ever  before  in  the  history  of  the  company,  with  the 
exception  of  a  single  day,  $529  per  share.  This  is  the  result  of 
more  than  four  years’  litigation  which  cost  the  independent 
companies  and  the  American  company  vast  sums  of  money,  and 
the  government  as  large  or  larger  sums,  all  of  which  will  ulti¬ 
mately  be  paid  by  the  public. 

Smashing  the  Northern  Securities  Company. 

(Atwood  in  McClure’s  for  August,  1912.) 

As  a  fine  illustration  of  the  futility  of  anti-trust  legislatioa 
Mr.  Atwood  tells  the  story  of  the  case  against  the  Northern 
Securities  Company.  He  says: 

“The  smashing  of  the  Northern  Securities  Company  seven 
years  ago  was  the  first  great  attempt  to  change  the  face  of 
economic  nature  by  Supreme  Court  decree.  The  outcome  is 
well  known.  Within  four  months  after  the  decree,  the  value  of 
the  stocks  in  the  two  railroads  concerned  had  risen  $150,000,000. 
A  great  part  of  this  profit  went  to  the  men  in  the  inner  group. 
Since  then  great  holders  of  this  stock  have  died;  their  stocks 
have  been  willed  away.  But  the  entire  control  of  the  two  rail¬ 
roads  still  lies  exactly  where  it  lay  under  the  Hill-Morgan 
group  of  ‘insiders.’  The  individuals  changed  and  will  change 
again.  The  group  remains;  the  value  of  the  property  demands  it. 

“Since  then  a  variety  of  other  government  actions  have 
taken  place — all  with  the  same  result.  The  great  tobacco 
company’s  dissolution,  and  now  the  still  more  spectacular 
smashing  of  the  Standard  Oil,  have  both  come  to  the  same 
conclusion.  The  artificial  stockholder — the  corporation  holding 
other  corporation  stocks — is  killed.  By  doing  this  the  govern¬ 
ment  has  forced  the  operation  of  great  concerns  more  and  more, 
into,  the  ‘inside’  group,  and  made  possible  the  distribution  of 
tens  of  millions  more  to  the  multimillionaires.” 


88 


(c)  REGULATION  A  FAILURE. 

Regulating  the  Food  Trust. 

(From  “The  Truth  About  Socialism,”  by  Allan  L.  Benson 
pages  170-171.) 

Mr.  Roosevelt  and  some  others  would  have  you  believe  that 
all  of  these  wrongs  can  be  “regulated”  into  rights.  They  would 
have  you  believe  that  only  “strong”  commissions  are  necessary 
to  make  all  of  these  wrongs  right.  But  Mr.  Roosevelt  and  some 
others  do  not  know  what  they  are  talking  about.  This  is  not 
a  matter  of  opinion  but  a  matter  of  fact.  Men  have  talked  as 
they  talk  since  robbery  began.  History  records  no  instance  of 
one  of  them  that  made  good.  During  all  of  the  years  that 
Mr.  Roosevelt  was  in  the  White  House,  he  never  appointed 
a  commission  that  was  “strong”  enough  to  make  good. 

We  have  it  upon  the  authority  of  no  less  a  man  than  Dr. 
Wiley  that  Mr.  Roosevelt’s  commission  to  prevent  the  poison¬ 
ing  of  food  was  not  strong  enough  to  make  good.  The  food¬ 
poisoning  went  on. 

I  mention  Mr.  Roosevelt’s  food  commission  because  it  is  a 
shining  example  of  what  his  “strong”  commission  theory  of 
government  can  not  do.  Mr.  Roosevelt,  unquestionably,  is  and 
was  opposed  to  the  poisoning  of  food.  He  appointed  a  com¬ 
mission  to  stop  one  kind  of  poisoning.  But,  for  reasons  that 
you,  as  well  as  any  one  else,  can  surmise,  the  .commission  de¬ 
cided  in  favor  of  the  food-poisoners  instead  of  in  favor  of  the 
public.  Which  brings  us  to  this  question:  If  Mr.  Roosevelt 
could  not  appoint  a  commission  “strong”  enough  even  to  pre¬ 
vent  the  poisoning  of  food,  what  reason  have  you  to  believe 
that  he  or  any  one  else  could  appoint  a  commission  strong 
enough  to  prevent  capitalists  from  robbing  workingmen? 

Regulation  a  Failure  and  a  Fraud. 

(From  “The  Failure  of  Regulation,”  by  Daniel  W.  Hoan,  City 

Attorney  of  Milwaukee.  This  excellent  book,  the  most 

comprehensive  on  the  subject,  can  be  obtained  from  the 

National  Office  of  the  Socialist  Party  for  25  cents.) 

Regulation  of  public  service  corporations  was  experimented 
with  for  nearly  half  a  century  in  European  countries  and  aban¬ 
doned  in  favor  of  government  ownership  long  before  the  re¬ 
formers  and  progressives  introduced  this  wonderful  remedy  into 
American  politics. 

In  1878  our  nation  started  out  to  regulate  railroads.  We 
have  had  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  at  work  for 
thirty-five  years.  Finding  that  national  regulation  did  not  solve 
the  problem,  the  states  began  appointing  commissions  to  reg¬ 
ulate  the  railroads  and  other  utilities. 

And  of  all  the  state  utility  laws  for  the  regulation  of  trusts 
and  corporations  the  Wisconsin  law  is  regarded  as  the  best. 
Practically  all  the  reformers  agree  that  Wisconsin  has  a  first 
class  regulation  law.  It  has  served  as  a  model  for  other  states. 

I  take  this  therefore  as  the  best  that  regulation  can  produce 
and  I  venture  the  statement  that  no  shrewder  piece  of  political 
humbuggery  and  downright  fraud  has  ever  been  placed  upon 
the  statute  books  than  the  Wisconsin  Public  Utility  Law.  It  is 
supposed  to  be  legislation  for  the  people.  In  fact,  it  is  legisla¬ 
tion  for  the  moneyed  oligarchy. 

A  FEW  ASTONISHING  RESULTS. 

This  famous  law  and  its  commission  for  the  regulation  of 
public  utilities  has  produced  some  astonishing  results.  We  will 
mention  a  few: 

1.  Regulation  has  raised  rates  instead  of  lowering  them. 

The  Manitowoc  Gas  Company  of  Manitowoc,  Wisconsin, 


89 

filed  a  petition  with  the  commission  in  April,  1907,  asking  per¬ 
mission  to  readjust  its  rates  so  that  it  could  sell  both  fuel  and 
illuminating  gas  at  a  uniform  rate  of  $1  per  thousand  cubic  feet 
and  to  charge  25  cents  per  month  for  hire  of  a  meter. 

The  prayer  of  the  company  was  heard— and  answered. 

The  commission  found  that  the  company  had  been  doing 
itself  a  great  wrong.  It  had  been  charging  too  little— it  should 
charge  much  more.  In  fact,  it  had  been  too  modest.  It  had 
asked  only  to  raise  the  charge  to  $1.  It  should  have  asked 
more. 

The  commission  therefore  took  compassion  on  the  gas  com¬ 
pany  and  not  only  granted  the  25  cents  service  charge,  but 
ordered  a  net  rate  of  $1.25  for  the  first  one  thousand  feet,  $1.15 
for  the  second  thousand  and  $1.05  for  each  additional  thousand 
cubic  feet.  Thus  the  commission’s  rate  was  from  five  to  25  cents 
higher  than  that  requested  to  be  charged  by  the  company. 

And  this  is  not  an  isolated  case.  There  have  been  many 
others.  Up  to  1912  the  commission  had  ordered  rates  raised  for 
seven  private  water,  gas,  electric  and  street  railways,  and  twenty 
private  telephone  companies. 

That  is  the  way  regulation  works  in  Wisconsin. 

2.  Regulation  has  effectually  blocked  municipal  ownership, 
eliminated  competition  and  otherwise  helped  the  corporations 
to  tighten  their  grip  upon  the  people. 

On  January  17,  1908,  the  private  electric  light  company  of 
Chilton,  Wisconsin,  ceased  to  operate  its  plant  entirely.  On 
March  17,  the  citizens  voted  two  to  one  in  favor  of  building 
a  municipal  plant.  August  8,  1908,  after  the  private  plant  had 
been  idle  for  almost  seven  months,  the  city  council,  on  the 
assumption  that  the  private  company  had  defaulted  entirely  and 
abandoned  its  rights,  repealed  the  franchise. 

Thereupon  the  private  company  appeared  in  court  appealing 
to  the  famous  utility  law  and  actually  secured  an  injunction 
restraining  the  city  from  repealing  the  ordinance.  The  case  was 
taken  to  the  highest  court  in  the  state,  where  the  claims  of  the 
company  were  upheld. 

The  citizens  of  Chilton  soon  awoke  to  the  fact  that  the 
r  corporation  had  them  by  the  throat.  La  Follette’s  regulation 
law  had  not  only  taken  away  the  city’s  right  to  build  its  own 
plant  so  long  as  the  private  company  was  doing  business,  but 
|  it  also  prevented  the  dislodgment  of  the  private  company  until 
such  time  as  the  city  got  ready  to  buy  it  out,  bag  and  baggage, 
and  pay  therefor  such  price  as  the  commission  saw  fit  to  fix. 

In  a  similar  manner  the  city  of  Kenosha  discovered  that 
under  this  utility  law  it  could  not  even  grant  a  franchise  to  a 
competing  company.  There  are  many  similar  situations. 

3.  IT  INCREASES  THE  DIVIDENDS  OF  THE  COR¬ 
PORATIONS.  It  has  been  shown  that  the  dividends  of  the 
railroads  have  steadily  increased  under  regulation.  It  also  has 
been  shown  that  the  profits  of  Standard  Oil  are  enormously  in¬ 
creased  since  the  famous  victory  of  the  government  which  com¬ 
pelled  its  dissolution. 

Regulation  has  worked  the  same  way  in  Wisconsin. 

By  its  order  in  fixing  the  gas  rates  in  the  Milwaukee  Gas 
Light  Company  case  the  Railroad  Commission  allowed  a  profit 
to  be  made  on  the  value  of  the  plant  of  approximately  ten  per 
cent  per  annum,  not  to  speak  of  a  depreciation  fund  approaching 
two  per  cent.  The  United  States  Supreme  Court  has  decided 
that  six  per  cent  net  profit  was  sufficient  return  on  the  invest¬ 
ment  of  a  gas  plant  in  a  large  city.  The  Wisconsin  commis¬ 
sion,  however,  thought  it  would  be  more  “progressive”  to  allow 
ten  per  cent. 

The  application  of  the  ruling  in  this  case  enables  the  cor- 


90 


poration  to  draw  a  dividend  of  16  per  cent  and  give  it  a  clear 
profit  of  $1,000,000  per  year. 

4.  It  favors  large  consumers.  Whg£r  would  you  think  if 
Uncle  Sam  sold  postage  stamps  to  the  department  stores  and 
banks  for -less  than  he  sold  them  to  the  common  man?  Now 
that  is  exactly  what  the  corporations  want. 

That’s  the  capitalist  theory.  And  that  is  the  theory  sustained 
and  enforced  by  the  Wisconsin  public  utility  law. 

The  city  of  Milwaukee  owns  its  own  water  system.  It 
charges  a  uniform  rate  for  water,  with  no  special  rate  for  the 
big  fellow. 

In  May,  1909,  twenty-five  big  manufacturers  filed  a  petition 
with  the  commission  asking  for  special  rates.  In  October,  1913, 
the  commission  issued  a  tentative  report  providing  that  the  old 
system  of  uniform  water  rates  to  all  should  be  rescinded  and 
new  rates  substituted  therefor,  favoring  all  those  who  used  over 
one  thousand  gallons  of  water  every  three  months.  Thus  again 
the  fellow  who  could  buy  the  largest  amount  of  the  product, 
to  be  used  in  most  instances  as  a  raw  material  for  profits,  was 
to  be  benefited  at  the  expense  of  the  small  consumers,  who  con¬ 
sumed  solely  for  use. 

And  this  also  is  a  typical  case,  '  . 

5.  It  helps  to  keep  labor  in  subjection.  In  the  city  of 
Superior,  Wisconsin,  in  1912,  the  street  railway  company  had 
been  dismissing  its  employes  for  joining  a /Union,  etc.  A  strike 
was  called.  The  men  offered  to  go  baclj/to  work  upon  recog¬ 
nition  by  the  company  of  their  right  to  organize.  The  company 
refused  to  grant  the  demand.  The  service  was  at  a  standstill. 
An  action  was  instituted  in  court  to  compel  the  company  to 
supply  service.  Success  in  this  move  would  have  meant  victory 
for  the  men.  The  company  appealed  to  La  Follette’s  regulation 
law.  There,  sure  enough,  it )  was  written  that  all  questions  of 
adequate  service  must  be  determined  by  the  railroad  commis¬ 
sion  before  the  same  could  be  taken  into  the  courts.  The  delay 
of  the  courts  was  bad  enough,  but  to  think  of  first  going  to  the 
commission  was  despairing.  The  lower  court  refused  to  hold 
that  the  law  could  be  used  in  such  cases.  The  company  appealed 
to  the  Supreme  Court,  where  its  contention  was  sustained. 

6.  •  Endless  delays.  Another  feature  of  the  Wisconsin  ex¬ 
perience  with  regulation  that  proves  its  utter  futility  is  the 
endless  delays  that  occur. 

We  will  cite  here  just  one  case  that  is  typical  of  hundreds. 

On  July  11,  1907,  the  city  of  Milwaukee  appealed  to  the  com¬ 
mission  for  relief  from  intolerable  conditions  and  a  reduction 
of  fares  on  the  street  car  lines.  It  took  five  years,  or  until 
September,  1912,  to  get  a  decision  out  of  the  commission.  The 
decision  gave  no  relief  as  to  the  service  and  only  one  extra  fare 
for  a  dollar.  And  even  then  they  didn’t  get  it. 

The  “regulation  law”  provides  that  the  company  If  dis¬ 
satisfied  with  any  decision  of  the  commission  can  appeal  to  the 
courts.  The  company  was  dissatisfied.  It  appealed.  Another 
month’s  delay. 

The  court,  however,  sustained  the  order.  The  company 
appealed  again.  The  judgment  of  the  court  was  stayed.  Sev¬ 
eral  more  months’  delay. 

The  Supreme  Court  of  the  state  announced  its  decision  on 
May  31,  1913.  It  again  sustained  the  order  of  the  commission 
and  ordered  the  one  little  extra  fare  for  a  dollar  given  to  the 
people  of  Milwaukee. 

The  company  secured  a  “writ  of  error”  to  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court.  And  there  at  present,  six  years  and  a  half  after 
the  case  was  first  brought  to  the  commission,  the  matter  rests. 
The  writer  does  not  believe  that  the  matter  can  possibly  be 
brought  on  for  argument  before  May,  1915. 


\ 


91 


e  Eight  years,  or  more,  to  get  one  case  through  the  mill  of 
this  great  regulation  process  and  secure  for  a  city  of  400,000 
population  one  little  measly  four-cent  street  car  ticket.  And 
we  haven’t  got  it  yet. 

Such  is  regulation! 

WHY  IT  FAILS. 

.  There  are  several  reasons  why  “regulation”  fails  and  always 
will  fail: 

i  E  Regulation  involves  an  inevitable  and  a  never  ending 
conflict  between  the  owners  of  the  corporations  and  the  people. 
The  corporations  want  dividends;  the  people  want  good  service, 
low  rates,  good  wages,  etc.  The  one  simply  can  not  be  had 
without' cutting  into  the  other.  And  there  you  are. 

2.  Regulation  involves  a  needless  duplication  of  effort  and 
expense.  The  United  States  government  spends  over  a  million 
and  a  half  dollars  annually  for  its  commission.  The  state  of 
Wisconsin  pays  $200,000  for  its  state  commission,  while  New 
York  state  spends  over  a  million  dollars  annually. 

With  these  fabulous  sums  of  money  wasted  in  a  vain  and 
futile  effort  to  regulate  utilities  we  could  buy  and  pay  for  and 
turn  over  to  Uncle  Sam  all  the  big  trusts  in  a  few  years. 

3.  The  task  is  too  great  for  any  commission. 

The  railroad  commission  of  Wisconsin  pretends  to  regulate 
forty-three  railroads  controlling  7,586  miles  of  trackage,  six 
express  companies,  several  telegraph  companies,  twenty-eight 
street  railway  companies,  and  in  addition  thereto  1,164  local 
utilities. 

It  is  a  human  impossibility  for  any  commission  ever 
conceived  by  our  “regulation”  statesmen  to  handle  such  an 
enormous  task  without  interminable  delays.  It  is  certainly 
impossible  to  follow  up  its  orders  and  see  that  they  are 
enforced. 

4.  And  finally  the  corporations  are  sure  to  strive  by  every 
device  known  to  human  ingenuity  to  control  and  influence  the 
commissioners.  In  January,  1913,  the  United  States  Senate 
voted  to  impeach  Robert  W.  Archibald,  a  member  of  the  Inter¬ 
state  Commerce  Commission,  for  using  his  position  corruptly 
in  the  interests  of  the  railroads.  We  know  something  of  that 
sort  always  happens  sooner  or  later. 

How  Regulation  Works  in  Washington. 

(From  “Municipal  vs.  State  Control  of  Public  Utilities,”  by 

Prof.  J.  Allen  Smith,  Dean  of  the  Graduate  School  of  the 

University  of  Washington.  National  Municipal  Review,  Vol. 

Ill,  No.  1,  January,  1914.) 

It  is  worthy  of  consideration  that  this  agitation  for  state 
control  is  subsequent  to  the  great  popular  movement  to  place 
municipal  government  in  th^  hands  of  the  people  of  our  cities. 
It  was  not  in  evidence  so  long  as  cities  were  dominated  by 
political  rpachines  subservient  to  the  special  interests.  Only 
since  municipal  democracy  has  appeared  with  its  insistent  de¬ 
mand  that  the  people  of  our  cities  shall  have  the  control  of 
franchises  in  their  own  hands,  has  the  movement  for  state 
control  acquired  an  apparently  irresistible  force.  It  has  not 
come  as  a  popular  demand  from  the  cities  themselves.  Indeed, 
American  cities  have  learned  from  a  rather  bitter  experience 
that  constant  vigilance  has  been  necessary  to  prevent  public 
utility  corporations  from  foisting  upon  them  through  the  state 
government,  franchise  and  other  legislation  advantageous  to 
such  interests,  without  much  regard  to  the  welfare  of  the  people 
directly  concerned.  No  fact  in  recent  municipal  history  stands 
out  more  clearly  than  that  the  state  government  has  failed  to 
protect  cities  against  the  abuses  of  public  service  corporations 


operating  within  their  limits.  Not  only  has  the  state  failed  to 
afford  adequate  protection,  but  it  has  tied  the  hands  of  the  city 
in  dealing  with  these  corporations,  until  it  is  unable  to  protect 
itself.  This  situation  has  been  brought  about  both  by  legis¬ 
lative  acts  and  court  decisions. 

Professor  Smith  thereupon  reviews  a  number  of  legislative 
acts  and  court  decisions  which  conclusively  prove  his  case.  He 
then  continues: 

The  public  service  commission  bill,  as  originally  introduced, 
in  1914,  in  the  state  of  Washington,  contained  a  provision  giving 
the  commission  control  over  municipally  owned  and  operated 
utilities.  A  determined  fight  against  this  feature  of  the  act  by 
cities  owning  public  utilities  finally  resulted  in  its  elimination. 
The  attempt  to  put  municipally  owned  utilities  under  the  con¬ 
trol  of  the  commission  was  renewed  in  the  legislature  of  1913. 
The  public  utility  corporations  were  actively  and  openly  work¬ 
ing  to  bring  this  about  and  were  supported  in  this  effort  by  the 
state  public  service  commission.  The  plan  of  the  public  service 
commission  and  the  corporations  failed  again  only  after  stren¬ 
uous  opposition  from  the  cities,  and  from  present  indications 
the  effort  to  deprive  cities  of  the  control  of  their  own  utilities 
will  be  renewed  when  the  legislature  meets  again.  The  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  old  commission  have  since  resigned,  but  two  of  the 
former  members  of  that  body  are  publicly  supporting  the  move¬ 
ment  which  the  utility  corporations  are  pushing  to  take  the  con¬ 
trol  of  publicly  owned  utilities  out  of  the  hands  of  the  cities. 
One  of  the  reasons  given  in  support  of  this  proposal  is  the 
competition  of  publicly  owned  plants.  It  is  not  difficult  to  see 
that  'this  is  indeed  the  main  reason  why  the  corporations  are 
trying  to  deprive  cities  of  the  right  to  manage  their  own  util¬ 
ities.  Cities  like  Seattle  and  Tacoma,  owning  large  and  efficient 
light  and  power  plants,  have  greatly  lessened*  the  cost  of  light 
and  power  fc>  consumers.  The  competition  of  public  plants  has 
in  fact  been  the  only  available  means  of  protecting  the  public 
against  excessive  charges  for  such  service.  And  now  that  these 
municipal  undertakings  are  accomplishing  what  direct  regula¬ 
tion  has  heretofore  failed  to  accomplish,  the  private  corpora¬ 
tions  thus  subjected  to  indirect  but  effective  municipal  regula¬ 
tion  are  making  a  persistent  attempt  to ’deprive  cities  of  this 
means  of  protection. 

In  view  of  such  facts  as  those  above  mentioned,  it  is  not 
surprising  that  public  service  commission  control  of  local  util¬ 
ities  should  be  regarded  with  some  apprehension.  Our  experi¬ 
ence  under  state  commission  control  has  as  yet  been  somewhat 
limited,  but  one  case  may  be  referred  to  which  shows  the  pos¬ 
sible  advantages  of  the  plan  to  public  utility  corporations.  An 
application  was  made  to  the  commission  for  permission  to 
increase  the  rates  charged  by  the  Independent  Telephone  Com¬ 
pany  of  Seattle.  This  proposed  increase  above  the  maximum 
fixed  in  the  franchise  granted  by  the  city  was  opposed  by  the 
municipal  authorities.  The  commission  authorized  the  increase 
in  rates  and  the  Supreme  Court  upheld  its  decision  (State  ex 
rel.  Webster  vs.  Superior  Court,  67  Wash.  37). 

One  argument  of  which  much  is  made  tyy  the  promoters  of 
state  control  through  a  commission,  is  that  such  a  plan  will 
take  the  question  of  public  utility  control  out  of  politics.  It  is 
easy  to  see  that  in  depriving  cities  of  all  power  in  relation  to 
public  utilities,  this  vitally  important  matter  is  in  fact  taken  out 
of  municipal  politics.  It  merely  transfers  this  question,  how¬ 
ever,  to  another  and  larger  political  arena,  the  state,  and  in  this 
arena  the  public  utility  corporations  by  making  common  cause 
hope  to  secure  more  satisfactory  results  than  is  possible  through 
the  now  democratized  municipal  governments. 


PART  III 


E 

THE  CAPITALIST  SYSTEM-THE  CONCEN¬ 
TRATION  OF  OWNERSHIP  AND 
ITS  EFFECTS 


1.  Concentration  in  General. 

(a)  THE  TRUSTS. 

(From  Moody’s  “The  Truth  About  the  Trusts.” 

There  are  in  the  United  States  today  (1904)  an  aggregation 
of  over  440  large  industrial,  franchise  and  transportation  trusts 
of  an  important  and  active  character,  with  a  total  floating  capital 
•f  $20,379,162,511. 

Of  161  important  tursts: 

78  control  50%  or  more  of  their  product. 

57  control  60%  or  more  of  their  product. 

26  control  80%  or  more  of  their  product. 

All  range  from  10%  to  95%. 

I.  THE  GREATER  INDUSTRIAL  TRUSTS. 

Following  are  the  industrial  trusts  (this  does  not  include 
the  franchise  and  transportation  trusts)  which  were  known  to 
control  over  70  per  cent  or  more  of  the  industry.  In  case  of  un¬ 
certainty  the  trust  was  omitted: 

No.  of 

concerns  Proportion  of  industry  Total  ap- 
acqulred  or  dominated  or  proximate 

controlled.  controlled.  capital. 


Copper  Trust .  11  $  175,000,000 

Smelting  Trust...  121  85%  to  95%  201,650,400 

Sugar  Ref.  Trust.  65  70%  to  90%  145,000,000 

Tobacco  Trust _  150  (Am.)  90%  (For.)  502,915,700 

Merchant  Marine.  6  40%  to  60%  170,787,000 

Steel  Trust .  735"  .  1,370,700,000 

Standard  Oil  Trust  400  (Export)  9^0%  (Dom.)  84%  97,000,000 


Total  . 1,528  $2, 662, 752, 100 


II.  THE  SMALLER  INDUSTRIAL  TRUSTS. 


TRUSTS. 


No.  of 
concerns 
acquired  or 


Brake-Shoe  Trust  . 

Tin  Can  Trust  . 

Caramel  Trust  . 

Chewing  Gum  Trust . 

Farming  Tool  Trust  . 

Pneumatic  Tool  Trust . 

Glucose  Trust  . 

Match  Trust  . 

Chemical  Trust  . 

Fire  Brick  Trust  . 

Harvester  Trust  . 

Steam  Pump  Trust  . 

Meat  Trust  . 

Cracker  Trust  . 

Carbon  Trust  . 

Glassware  Trust  . 

Toy  Trust  . 

Pullman  Trust  . 

Phonograph  Trust  . 

Grass  Twine  Trust  . 

Ice  Trust  . 

Locomotive  Trust  . 

Pneumatic  Tube  Trust.... 
Steam  Radiator  Trust.... 
School  Furniture  Trust... 
Seeding  Machine  Trust.... 

Typefounders’  Trust  . 

Condensed  Milk  Trust . 


Proportion  of  in-  Total  ap- 
dustry  dominated  proximate 


oiled. 

or  controlled 

capital. 

5 

Over  90% 

$  2,400,000 

123 

65%  to  75% 

15,668,652 

3 

90% 

1,750,000 

6 

85% 

8,400,000 

13 

80% 

2,000,000 

7 

80% 

3,300,000 

20 

Large 

26,085,000 

18 

85% 

19,500,000 

24 

70% 

14,000,000 

17 

70% 

7,500,000 

6 

70% 

20,000,000 

8 

80% 

14,100,000 

80 

70% 

37,500,000 

11 

87% 

5,675,000 

u 

50%  to  70% 

4,000,000 

18 

70% 

5,000,000 

2 

85% 

165,000,000 

6 

80% 

1,800,000 

8 

Nearly  all 

700,000 

40 

80% 

8,750,000 

9 

70% 

25, 500', 000 

25 

87% 

2,100,000 

12 

80% 

5,650,000 

22 

80% 

5,000,000 

6 

90% 

3,500,000 

34 

77% 

3,000,000 

7 

Large 

20,000,000 

(Continued) 


No.  of  plants 
acquired  or 
controlled. 
3,426 
1,528 


4,954 

III— FRANCHISE  TRUSTS. 


Total  ap¬ 
proximate 
capital. 

'  000,000 
6,500,000 
2,700,000 
13,500,000 
4,300,000 
7,400,000 
17,500,000 
4,600,000 
20,000,000 
8,000,000 
8,500,000 
60,000,000 
1,790,000 

?  4,055,039,43* 
2,662,752,100 

6,737,791,533 

Capital. 

$  4,055,039,433 
2,662,752,100 

6,737,791,533 


Eight  important  telephone  and  telegraph 

trusts  . 

103  important  gas,  electric  light  and 
street  railway  consolidations  . 

Total  111  franchise  trusts 


136 

1,200 

1,336 


STEAM  RAILWAY  GROUPS. 


Vanderbilt  Group 
Pennsylvania  Railway  Group 
Morgan  Group 
Gould-Rockefeller  Group 
Harriman-Kuhn-Loeb  Group 
Moore  Group 


132 

80 

25 

109 

85 

91 


Total  Greater  Railway  Groups. 
Smaller  Railway  Groups  . 


Total  Railway  Groups 


SUMMARY. 


922 

250 


Greater  Industrial  Trusts  . 

Lesser  Industrial  Trusts  . . 

Industrial  Trusts  being  reorgani*ed 

Franchise  . 

Railway  Groups  . . 


1,172 


1,528 

3,426 

334 

1,336 

1,172 


3  629,700,500 

}, 105, 775, 571 
3  3,735,456,071 


*  1,169,196,132 
1,822,402,235 
2,265,116,350 
1,368,877,540 
1,321,248,711 
1,070,250,939 

?  9,017,091,907 
380,277,000 

$  9,397,368,907 


$  2,662,752,100 
4,055,039,433 
528,551,000 
3,735,456,071 
9,397,368,907 


Grand  total 


.  7,796  $20,379,167,511 

(b)  METHODS  OF  CONCENTRATION. 

(From  “Concentration  and  Control,”  a  Solution  of  the  Trust 

Problem  in  the  United  States.  Charles  R.  Van  Hise.  Pages 

60,  61,  64,  68,  69,  70.  Published  by  the  Macmillan  Company.) 

The  different  kinds  of  associations  and  combinations  may 
be  roughly  classified  as  follows: 

(1)  Informal  or  Formal  Associations  for  the  General  Pro¬ 
tection  or  Advancement  of  a  Business. — These  are  illustrated 
by  the  various  business  associations.  Almost  every  industry 
has  such  an  association,  and  some  of  them  many.  Thus  there 
are  associations  of  brewers,  butchers,  bankers,  hardware  men, 
lumbermen,  cattlemen,  fruit  growers,  wine  makers,  butter  mak¬ 
ers,  and  of  practically  every  producing  industry.  Similarly 
there  are  associations  of  salesmen,  wholesalers  and  retailers 
in  each  of  the  various  industries,  whether  they  be  hardware, 
drugs,  dry  goods,  or  groceries.  These  sales  associations  may 
be  national,  state,  or  local,  or  they  may  be  national  with  state 
and  local  branches.  The  importance  of  the  local  associations 
depends  upon  the  size  of  the  town. 

(2)  Formal  Agreements. — In  certain  lines  of  business  cor¬ 
porations  have  made  definite  agreements  about  the  manage- 


95 


ment  of  the  business  of  the  uniting  parties.  The  arrangements, 
usually  called  pools,  (1)  divided  the  production  in  a  definite 
manner  between  the  different  companies;  (2)  divided  the  mar¬ 
kets;  (3)  regulated  the  sales  for  the  home  market,  perhaps  leav¬ 
ing  freedom  in  the  matter  of  export;  or  (4)  placed  the  entire 
profits  in  a  common  fund  or  pool  to  be  divided  according  to  an 
agreed  plan.  With  the  foregoing  features  there  sometimes  went 
agreements,  as  to  prices;  but  this  was  not  essential,  since  when 
controlling  outputs,  dividing  markets,  regulating  sales  and  appor¬ 
tioning  profits,  it  is  to  the  interest  of  all  to  keep  prices  at  a 
high  level. 

The  non-enforcible  agreement  gave  the  pools  a  fundamental 
weakness.  Any  member  that  became  dissatisfied  could  with¬ 
draw  at  any  time.  Also,  since  the  courts  refused  to  enforce  the 
arrangements  made  under  pools,  compliance  with  the  regulations 
depended  exclusively  upon  the  honor  of  those  entering  them; 
and,  in  consequence,  there  were  frequent  secret  violations  of  the 
pool  agreements. 

(3)  Trusts. — Since  the  pool  was  a  failure,  in  order  to  attain 
the  objects  striven  for  by  it,  the  trust  was  devised.  Under  the 
trust,  each  unit  of  the  combination  transferred  its  stock  to  trus¬ 
tees.  Thus  the  entire  stock  of  the  constituent  companies  was 
held  by  a  group  of  trustees  who  had  complete  authority  over 
the  business  of  all  the  companies  entering  into  the  trust.  An 
establishment  or  company  retained  its  own  officers  and  conducted 
its  business,  but  under  the  direction  of  the  trustees,  as  to  line  of 
product,  amount  of.  output  and  price.  The  trust  was  able  to 
prevent  over-building  and  over-production,  to  prevent  competi¬ 
tion  in  price  between  its  units,  to  apportion  business,  to  consoli¬ 
date  buying  and  selling,  and  thus  gave  all  the  advantages  of 
unity  of  organization  due  to  concentration  of  industry.  Well- 
known  types  of  this  organization  were  the  Standard  Oil  trust, 
the  sugar  trust,  the  cottonseed  oil  trust,  the  whisky  trust.  The 
great  period  of  the  trust  was  from  1888  to  1897. 

(4)  Holding  Corporations.— Under  the  trust  each  of  the  con¬ 
stituent  companies  was  an  independent  legal  entity.  The  stock 
was  simply  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  trustee  for  management. 
In  the  holding  corporation  the  stock  is  transferred  to  the  hold¬ 
ing  concern,  so  that  this  corporation  actually  owns  the  stock  of 
the  constituent  companies.  So  far  as  management  and  operation 
are  concerned,  the  situation  is  precisely  the  same  as  under  the 
trust  and  the  advantages  ,the  same,  only  the  constituent  com¬ 
panies  are  subsidiary  companies  instead  of  nominally  indepen¬ 
dent.  The  subsidiary  company  maintains  its  officers,  carries  on 
its  business  and  competes,  so  far  as  efficiency  is  concerned,  with 
the  other  companies  of  the  combination;  but  as  to  nature  and 
quantity  of  output  and  price,  the  policy  is  completely  controlled 
by  the  corporation  of  which  it  is  a  constituent  member.  The  era 
of  the  holding  corporation  began  in  the  nineties,  and  has  ex¬ 
tended  through  that  decade  and  the  first  decade  of  the  twentieth 
century.  Great  examples  are  the  Standard  Oil  Company  and  the 
United  States  Steel  Corporation. 

(5)  Complete  Merger.— This  is  the  final  stage  in  concentra¬ 
tion  of  management.  The  stock  of  the  constituent  companies 
of  the  combination  is  actually  bought  in  and  canceled,  the  only 
stock  being  that  of  the  master  company.  If,  for  instance,  the 
different  companies  of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation — 
the  Federal  Steel,  the  Carnegie  Steel,  and  others — cease  to 
exist  by  their  stock  being  canceled,  and  stock  of  the  Steel  Cor¬ 
poration  be  the  only  existing  issue,  we  should  have  the  final 
stage  of  corporation  management  for  this  gigantic  company. 

Since  the  recent  decisions  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court 
(see  pp.  180-181),  which  seem  to  indicate  that  holding  companies 
will  be  in  a  stronger  position  if  they  are  actually  manufacturing 


96 


companies,  it  is  easy  to  predict  that  the  great  consolidations, 
now  forming,  so  far  as  practicable  will  become  unified  corpora¬ 
tions.  The  merger  began  to  become  important  about  1904,  and 
since  that  time  its  growth  has  steadily  continued,  although,  as 
already  pointed  out,  the  holding  company  is  still  the  dominant 
form  of  concentration. 

(c)  DISTRIBUTION  OF  WEALTH. 


Based  on  the 

Census  of 

1910. 

By  Lucien  Sanial. 

No. 

Per  cent 

Wealth  Per  cent 

individuals 

of 

of 

total 

occupied. 

total. 

class. 

wealth. 

CLASS. 

Plutocratic  .  . 

250,251 

0.9 

$67,000,000,000 

70.5 

Middle  . 

...  8,429,845 

29.0 

24,000,000,000 

25.3 

Proletarian  . 

...  20,393,137 

70.1 

4,000,000,000 

4.2 

Totals  . 

...  29,073,233 

100.0 

$95,000,000,000 

100.0 

(d)  GREAT  FORTUNES  AND  BIG  INCOMES. 


(From  “We  Must  Regulate  Great  Fortunes/'  by  Richard 
Caverly,  in  the  San  Francisco  Labor  Clarion,  Aug.  29,  1913.) 

“There  are  in  the  United  States  about  18,000,000  families. 

The  privately  owned  wealth  of  the  nation  is  estimated  at 
$115,000,000,000.  Two  families  have  half  a  billion  each;  four 
families  have  $192,000,000  each;  eight  families  are  rated  at  $96,- 
000,000;  28  at  $48,000,000;  95  at  $24,000,000;  285  at  $12,000,000; 
770  at  $6,000,000;  1,925  at  $3,000,000;  4,620  at  $1,500,000.  In  those 
nine  groups  at  7,737  families,  with  a  total  wealth  of  $26,905,000. 
Next  come  10,500  families  with  $750,000;  23,000  with  $375,000; 
48,000  with  $187,500,  and  100,000  with  an  average  of  $93,750.” 

In  Pearson’s  Magazine  for  November,  1913,  p.  636,  is  given 
the  following  table  of  incomes,  derived  from  statistics  gathered 
by  the  United  States  Treasury: 

20  people  in  the  United  States  have  incomes  of  $10,000,000 
and  over. 

100  have  incomes  of  $1,000,000  to  $10,000,000. 

500  have  incomes  of  $500,000  to  $1,000,000. 

2,000  have  incomes  of  $100,000  to  $500,000. 

10,000  have  incomes  of  $50,000  to  $100,000. 

21,000  have  incomes  of  $30,000  to  $50,000. 

75,000  have  incomes  of  $20,000  to  $30,000. 

100,000  have  incomes  of  $10,000  to  $20,000. 

200,000  have  incomes  of  $5,000  to  $10,000.  * 

5,000,000  have  incomes  of  $1,000  to  $5,000. 

(e)  AMERICA  RULED  BY  A  HANDFUL  OF  MEN. 

(From  a  Speech  against  the  Aldrich  Bill,  March  24,  1908,  by 
Senator  La  Follette  in  the  Senate.) 

After  describing  the  manner  in  which  trust  magnates  con¬ 
trol  the  business  of  America,  Mr.  Pratt  (editor  of  the  Wall 
Street  Journal,  in  an  article  in  the  World’s  Work,  entitled  “Our 
Financial  Oligarchy”)  submits  a  list  of  seventy-six  men,  and 
denominates  them  “our  business  rulers.”  He  states  that  these 
seventy-six  men  were,  at  that  time,  holding,  in  round  numbers, 
sixteen  hundred  directorships  in  the  trusts  and  combinations 
of  the  country.  *  *  *  He  says  further: 

“Mr.  John  Moody  estimates  that  the  trust  power  of  the 
United  States  is  $20,379,000,000.  These  (76)  men  control  that 
power,  and  more.  They  are  also  the  dominant  influences  in 
the  banks  and  trust  companies  having  deposits  of  $10,000,000,000 
and  a  capital  investment  of  $2,750,000,000.  An  analysis  of  their 
power  will  show  that  fully  10  of  the  greatest  railroad,  indus¬ 
trial  and  banking  corporations,  with  a  capitalization  equal  to 


57 


more  than  one-fifth  of  the  nation’s  wealth,  are  controlled  bv 
them.  J 


“Here  are  the.  more  important  of  the  interests  which  they 
either  control  or  in  which  they  are  very  influential: 

“Interests  Controlled. — Banking,  iron  and  steel,  coal,  gas 
electric  light,  shipping,  oil,  beef,  insurance,  copper,  cotton^ 
hardware  real  estate,  dry  goods,  agricultural  implements,  rail¬ 
roads,  telegraph,  cable,  telephone,  traction,  express,  mining, 
sugar,  tobacco,  coffee,  wool,  machinery,  building,  paper,  and 
food  products.” 


As  illustrating  the  centralization  of  railroad  control,  the 
author  cites  eight  men,  who  control  two-thirds  of  the  railway 
mileage  of  the  country,  and  nine  billion  of  the  thirteen  billions  of 
railroad  capitalization  as  it  then  stood.  The  men  named  were* 
J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  A.  J.  Cassatt,  J.  J.  Hill,  E.  H.  Harriraan, 
G.  J.  Gould,  W.  K.  Vanderbilt,  W.  H.  Moore  and  Wm.  Rocke¬ 
feller.  Of  these  eight  men  he  says  further: 

They  control  the  coal  trade  also,  and  their  influence  ex¬ 
tends  over  the  express  companies  and  through  many  industrial 
corporations.  As  masters  of  the  railroads  they  have  a  taxing 
power— the  prices  charged  for  transportation  can  be  so  termed 
-—equal  to  the  taxing  power  of  Congress,  and  the  gross  income 
°u  * rai^roa(^s  1S  nearly  2,000  million  a •  year,  as  compared  with 
the  Federal  Government  revenues  of  about  700  million.” 


In  naming  the  men  who  controlled  the  trust  power  of  this 
country  in  1905,  Mr.  Pratt  cited  Mr.  John  Moody  as  to  the 
magnitude  of  this  power.  John  Moody  is  the  author  of  pub¬ 
lications  which  are  consulted  every  hour  of  the  day  in  Wall 
Street  as  a  guide  to  investors  in  railroad,  industrial  and  other 
securities.  *  *  *  Mr.  Moody’s  work,  from  which  Mr.  Pratt 

quoted,  gave  the  statistics  as  of  January  1,  1904.  Since  that 
time  an  enormous  increase  in  consolidation  has  taken  place. 
*  .*  .*  Mr.  Moody  has  prepared  a  revision  of  these  statistics,' 
bringing  the  figures  down  to  January  1,  1908.  *  *  *  I  pre! 
sent  the  figures  for  1904  and  1908  in  parallel  columns: 


No.  of  plants 
acquired  or 
controlled. 

Classifications.  1904.  1908. 

>  Seven  greater  indus¬ 
trial  trusts  . 1,528  1,638 

Lesser  industrial  trusts  3,426  5,038 

I  m  p  o  r  tant  industrial 
trusts  in  reorganiza¬ 
tion  .  282  _ 

Total  important  in¬ 
dustrial  trusts.  ..  .5,288  6,676 

Franchise  trusts  . 1,336  2,599 

Great  railroad  groups  1,040  .... 


Total  capitalization  stocks 

and  bonds  outstanding. 

1904.  1908.  * 

$  2,662,752,100  $  2,708,438,754 

4,055,039,433  8,243,175,000 


528,551,000 


$  7,246,342,533  $10,951,613,754 

3,735,456,071  7,789,393,000 

9,397,363,907  12,931,154,000 


8,644  10,020  $20,379,162,511  .$31,672,160,754 

This  table  shows  an  increase  in  trust  consolidation  almost 
beyond  human  comprehension.  It  shows  that  in  these  four 
years  the  trust  capitalization  was  increased  by  these  few  men 
in  control  of  the  big  business  of  the  country  more  than  $11,- 
000,000,000,  or  more  than  55  per  cent.  This  $31,000,000,000 
of  industrial,  franchise  and  transportation  in  1908  -does  not  rep¬ 
resent  all  the  corporate  power  in  the  hands  of  the  Standard 
Oil-Morgan  combination.  It  does  not  include  their  financial 
consolidations — their  banks,  trust  companies,  and  insurance 
companies. 


Along  with  this  enormous  increase  in  trust  power  has  gone 
a  steady  process  of  centralization  in  the  control  of  that  power, 
until  now  the  entire  situation  is  dominated  by  the  Standard 
Oil-Morgan  combination.  Mr.  Pratt  named  sixty-seven  men. 
When  you  begin  the  process,  of  elimination,  to  reach  the  real 
source,  the  true  fountain  h5&d  of  control  over  the  business 


98 


life  of  the  people  of  this  country,  you  come  down,  sir,  to  two 
names: 

Standard  Oil  and  Morgan. 

All  feuds  between  these  two  great  powers  have  been  put 
aside.  Mr.  Morgan’s  picture  hangs  on  the  wall  of  the  inner 
room  of  the  Rockefellers  at  26  Broadway.  In  combination  of 
today  they  are  steadily  absorbing  the  smaller  powers.  Mr. 
Hill  has  been  taught  that  he  must  not  oppose  the  big  ones. 
The  Gould  interests  are  being  swallowed  by  the  combine.  Morse 
and  Heinze  were  neatly  pocketed  during  the  recent  panic.  The 
smelter  trust  was  given  a  drubbing  and  started  in  the  same 
direction.  The  Vanderbilts  cannot  long  retain  their  important 
control,  and  themselves  see  the  handwriting  on  the  wall. 

In  the  list  of  men  who  may  still  be  said  to  be  in  control  of 
the  country’s  business,  there  are  only  fourteen  who  can  treat 
with  the  Standard  Oil-Morgan  combine  on  anything  even  re¬ 
motely  approaching  a  footing.  *  *  * 

Mr.  President,  any  man  with  intelligence  who  sees  the  same 
names  repeated  over  and  over  again  on  the  various  directorates 
which,  in  a  national  sense,  dominate  the  great  industries  of  this 
country,  will  understand  how  the  important  business  interests 
are  in  fact  welded  and  fused  together  into  one  mass  under  one 
control. 

[The  names  of  the  fourteen  men  referred  to  above  were  cited 
by  Mr.  La  Follette  as  follows:  W.  K.  Vanderbilt,  George  J. 
Gould,  John  J.  Astor,  August  Belmont,  Jacob  Schiff,  James 
Spyer,  Frederick  Weyerhauser,  E.  H.  Harriman,  J.  J.  Hill, 
Henry  C.  Frick,  Thomas  F.  Ryan,  W.  H.  Moore,  J.  Ogden 
Armour  and  Louis  F.  Swift.] 

The  Septemvirate  of  Industry. 

(From  an  article  by  John  Moody  and  George  Kibbe  Turner  in 
McClure’s  Magazine,  August,  1911.) 

Seven  men  in  Wall  Street  now  control  a  great  share  of  the 
fundamental  industries  and  resources  of  the  United  States.  Every 
year  they  and  their  successors  will  control  more.  They  domi¬ 
nate,  with  their  allies  and  dependents,  the  national  machinery 
for  the  making  and  holding  of  great  corporate  monopolies, 
into  which  a  greater  and  greater  part  of  the  capital  and  business 
of  the  country  must  inevitably  be  drawn. 

Three  of  these  seven  men — J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  James  J. 
Hill  and  George  F.  Baker,  head  of  the  First  National  Bank  of 
New  York — belong  to  the  so-called  Morgan  group;  four  of 
them— -John  D.  and  William  Rockefeller,  James  Stillman,  head 
of  the  National  City  Bank,  and  Jacob  H.  Schiff,  of  the  private 
banking  firm  of  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Co.— to  the  so-called  Standard 
Oil-City-Bank  group. 

It  is  impossible  to  express  in  exact  terms  the  ownership  or 
control  of  the  seven  men  and  their  allies  in  American  industry. 
But  a  rough  expression  of  the  percentage  of  their  control  of 
the  various  greatest  operations  and  resources  of  the  country 
follows.  The  percentages,  where  not  otherwise  indicated,  are 
calculated  from  the  figures  of  capitalization  appearing  in  Poor  s 
and  Moody’s  Manuals: 


Percentage  of  Industries  and  Resources  Controlled. 


Central 
Group. 
.  61 

Alli¬ 

ances. 

25 

Out¬ 

side. 

14 

.  93% 

6% 

Anthracite  Coal  (supply  owned) . 

gtQel  . 

.  82 

*6% 

5 

5 

IS 

66% 

Petroleum  (output  handled)  . 

.  67 

is 

60 

15 

40 

60 

40 

26 

99 


According  to  the  figures  in  Poor’s  Manual  of  Railroads  for 
1910,  the  securities  of  railroad  companies  actually  in  the  hands 
>of  investors  amount  to  .nearly  fifteen  billion  dollars.  The  mar¬ 
ket  value  of  these,  calculated  on  the  prices  of  January,  1911, 
was  about  fourteen  and  a  half  billion.  About  sixty  per  cent  of 
the  railroads  represented  by  these  securities  was  under  the 
direct  and  permanent  control  of  the  seven  men  and  their  nearest 
allies.  About  twenty-five  per  cent  more  is  under  a  partial  but 
still  sufficient  control.  The  remaining  fifteen  per  cent  of  the 
railroads  is  made  up  of  a  few  weak  systems  and  small  unrelated 
scraps  of  road.  A  detailed  statement  of  this  cpntrol  follows: 

Per-  Market  Per- 
,  cent-  value,  cent- 

Capital.  age.  Jan.,  1911.  age. 

Central  group . $  9,080,853,507  61  5  9,562,523,976  66 

Central  group  alliances.  3,782,30^,488  25  3,695,343,016  25 

Other  Wall  Street  groups  1,013,340,000  7  839,810,000  6 

Outside  Interests  .  1,013,299,465  7  360,000,000  S 

Total  . 514,889,797,260  100  $14,457,676,992  100 

Central  group. — Union  Pacific,  Southern  Pacific,  Illinois  Cen¬ 
tral,  Hill  roads,  St.  Paul,  New  York  Central,  New  Haven,  Erie, 
Reading,  Southern,  Rock  Island,  Atlantic  Coast  Line,  etc. 

Alliances. — Pennsylvania,  Baltimore  &  Ohio,  Atchison,  Gould 

lines. 

Other  Wall  Street  groups. — Hawley  roads,  Yoakum-Hawley 
roads. 

2.  Concentration  in  the  Ownership  of  Natural  Resources, 
(a)  CONCENTRATION  IN  THE  OWNERSHIP  OF  LAND. 

Public  Domain  Donated  to  Railroads. — (From  a  speech  by 
Senator  La  Follette  at  Springfield,  Ill.,  January  5,  1912.  Chi¬ 
cago  Tribune,  January  6.) 

Originally  the  public  domain  of  the  United  States  amounted 
in  round  numbers  of  1,800,000,000  acres.  Of  this  amount  nearly 
all  of  the  original  domain  available  for  agriculture  and  the. 
greater  part  of  our  mineral  wealth  outside  of  Alaska  have  been 
disposed  of,  amounting  in  round  numbers  to  more  than  700,- 
000,000  acres. 

Out  of  the  571,000,000  acres  disposed  of  to  individuals  and 
corporations,  there  have  been  acquired  through  the  exercise  of 
the  homestead  right  only  115,000,000  acres.  The  railroads  and 
other  corporations  had  bestowed  upon  them  by  congressional 
grants,  without  any  return  whatever  to  the  government,  in 
round  numbers  123,000,000  acres. 

In  addition  to  that,  there  l?as  been  conferred  upon  the  rail¬ 
roads  by  state  grants  land  theretofore  granted  by  the  federal 
government  to  the  several  states,  increasing  the  total  grant 
to  the  railroads,  in  round  numbers,  to  200,000,000  acres  of  land, 
enough  to  make  the  states  of  Ohio.  Indiana,  Illinois,  Missouri, 
Iowa  and  Wisconsin. 

Railroad  Grants.— (From  ‘Who  Owns  the  Earth?”  by  Henry 
M.  Hyde  in  Technical  World  Magazine  for  January,  1909.) 

Up  to  twelve  years  ago  Congress  had  given  away  the  public 
domain  to  railroad  and  other  corporations  to  the  extent  of 
266,000,000  acres,  a  bit  of  territory  not  far  in  extent  from  the 
total  area  of  France  and  Germany,  two  countries  which  sup¬ 
port  between  them  a  population  much  greater  than  the  whole 
population  of  the  United  States  when  the  last  census  was  taken. 

Less  than  one  hundred  years  ago  the  public  lands  of  the 
United  States  embraced  one  billion  eight  hundred  million  acres. 
More  than  one-tenth  of  the  whole — and  this  of  the  choicest — 
tvas  granted  off-hand  to  railroads  and  other  corporations. 
Eighty  million  acres  went  in  grants  to  agricultural  and  other 


100 


schools  and  colleges.  More  than  six  million  acres  were  disr 
posed  of  by  the  gift  of  soldiers’  scrip — a  large  part  of  which 
»vas  bougfrt  up  for  little  or  nothing  by  capitalists — and  seventy 
millions  were  given  back  to  several  states  as  swamp  land. 

The  total  of  775,000,000  now  in  the  public  domain  looks  im¬ 
pressive.  But  370,000,000  acres  of  this  is  in  Alaska,  which  is 
hot  likely  to  be  homesteaded  for  several  years.  Much  of  the 
remainder  is  permanently  locked  up  in  government  forest  reser¬ 
vations,  national  parks  and  other  reserves,  and  there  are  also 
thousands  of  square  miles  of  mountains  and  deserts  which 
neither  irrigation  nor  improved  dry  farming  will  ever  bring 
under  the  plow. 

The  total  gifts  of  the  public  to  railways  by  municipalities, 
states  and  nation  cannot  be  accurately  stated,  but  it  is  known 
that  the  national  land  grants  alone  have  aggregated  more  than 
215,000,000  acres,  an  area  far  exceeding  the  whole  New  England 
and  the  Middle  States,  much  of  it  in  the  finest  and  most  fertile 
regions  of  the  United  States.  *  *  * 

The  railroad  grants  in  Minnesota  would  make  two  states 
the  size  of  Massachusetts,  one  of  which  was  donated  to  the 
promoters  of  the  Northern  Pacific  Railroad  Company.  In  Kan¬ 
sas  the  railroad  grants  would  make  the  two  states  of  Connecticut 
and  New  Jersey.  In  Iowa  the  area  granted  is  larger  than 
Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island.  In  Michigan  and  Wisconsin 
also  the  railway  pasture  is  nearly  as  large.  In  Montana  the 
grants  to  one  company  would  equal  the  whole  of  Maryland, 
New  Jersey  and  Massachusetts.  In  Washington  also  the  grants 
are  about  equivalent  to  the  same  three  states,  and  three  states 
the  size  of  New  Hampshire  could  be  carved  out  of  the  railway 
grants  in  California.  The  Union  Pacific  alone  obtained  13,- 
000,000  acres,  the  Kansas  Pacific  12,100,100,  the  Northern  Pacific 
47,000,000,  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific  42,000,000,  and  the  Southern 
Pacific  9,520,000  acres. 

The  total  area  given  by  act  of  Congress  to  western  roads  is 
nearly  as  large  as  the  whole  extent  of  the  original  thirteen 
states.  It  is  larger  than  the  German  Empire  and  Italy  com¬ 
bined;  larger  than  the  Austro-Hungarian  Empire,  Switzerland, 
Denmark  and  the  Netherlands;  larger  than  France,  Great  Brit¬ 
ain  and  Belgium. 

These  lands  are  worth  a  good  deal  more  than  the  whole 
cost  of  the  railroads,  to  say  nothing  of  the  gifts  to  the  com¬ 
panies  by  towns,  cities  and  states.  If  the  public  had  kept  its 
lands  and  built  the  railroads  itself,  with  funds  raised  by  the  issue 
of  bonds,  or  with  money  raised  by  progressive  taxation,  the 
rents  from  the  lands  and  the  profits  from  the  railways  would 
have  paid  for  them  and  rates  would  now  be  down  about  to  the 
cost  of  operation. 

Absentee  Landlordism. — (Henry  M.  Hyde  in  the  World  Mag¬ 
azine,  New  York,  for  January,  1909,  and  compiled  from  cyclp- 
pedia.) 


Duke  of  Bedford  . 

Earl  of  Brownlow  . 

Earl  of  Carlisle . 

Earl  of  Cawdor . 

Earl  of  Cleveland . 

Earl  of  Derby  . 

Duke  of  Devonshire  .... 
Lord  of  Londonboro  .... 
Duke  of  Northumberland 

Duke  of  Portland . 

Earl  of  Fowls  . 

Duke  of  Ruthland  . 

Lady  Willowly  . 

Name. 

Sir  W.  W.  Winn  . 

Earl  of  Yarborough  .... 

Baron  Tweeddale  . 

Byron  H.  Evans,  London 
Duke  of  Southerland  .... 


51,085 
57,700 
78,540 
51,538 
106,650 
56,698 
148,626 
53,655 
191,460 
55,259 
46,059 
70,039 
59,424 
No.  of 
acs.  owned. 
91,612 
54,570 
.  1,750,000 

700,000 
422,000 


101 


W.  Wheeley,  M.  P .  ,in„nA 

Lord  Denmore  . . . .  5?n’nnn 

Benjamin  Neugos,  Liverpool . 777.777.7. .  100  000 

M.  Ellerhousen,  Halifax .  . *  iJJ'JJJ 

Lord  D, unraven  .  * '  ’  * . 

A.  Peal,  M.  P. .  . . .  .  . . .  *  •  *  ?2*222 

Alexander  Grant,  London . 7.7.'. . 

Lord  Sculiy,  estate  in  Missouri  . ..7.7.7 .  500  000 

English  Syndicate  No.  3  in  Texas . .  .  *  ooo  ooo 

?,he  J^ollai*d  Company,  New  Mexico . . .  .7  7  !  .7  ! ! ! !  ^SOO'OOO 

Sir  Edward  Reid  and  Syndicate,  Florida .  2  000  000 

English  Syndicate  in  Mississippi  . . .  7  1500  000 

Marquis  of  Tuesdale  . . . . . .  .  .  1  too  nnn 

Phillips  Marshall  &  Co.,  London . .7  . .  1300000 

German-Amerlcan  Syndicate,  London . 77777' .'  .* '  750  000 

British  Land  Company  in  Kansas .  320  000 

Missouri  Land  Company,  Edinburgh .  "  300  000 

Robert  Tenent,  London  . .  .  930000 

Dundee  Land  Company,  .Scotland  . 7777‘ ! ! ! ! !  .777  "  247  000 

English  Land  Company  in  Florida  . .  50  000 

Sir  J.  L.  Kay,  England . .  5  000 

English  Syndicate  In  Wisconsin  .  *  * '  *  no  ooo 

Scotch  Syndicate  in  Florida . .  5J0  ooo 

A.  Boysen,  Denmark  . .77  .7.  60,00d 

Total  . .  22,910,748 

Landed  Estates.— (From  “Who  Owns  the  Earth?”  by  Henry 
M.  Hyde  in  Technical  World  Magazine  of  January,  1909.) 

Henry  Miller,  a  single  American  land-owner,  is  lord  of  the 
land  over  an  area  two-thirds  as  large  as  the  whole  of  the 
Emerald  Isle. 

Col.  D.  C.  Murphy  of  New  York  state  held  title  when  he 
died  to  more  than  4,000,000  acres  of  farm  lands.  The  late  Sen¬ 
ator  Farwell,  of  Illinois,  his  brother,  and  one  or  two  other  men, 
owned  three  million  acres  in  Texas.  Mrs.  Virginia  Ann  King, 
of  Greenville,  Texas,  owns  so  much  land  in  one  great  ranch 
that  it  is  a  drive  of  nearly  fifty  miles  from  the  porch  of  her 
manor  house  to  the  front  gate  of  her  door  yard. 

Samuel  W.  Allerton,  of  Chicago,  owns  more  than  40,000 
acres  of  improved  farm  land  in  the  great  central  states  of  Ohio, 
Iowa  and  Illinois. 

Henry  Miller  owns  and  controls  fourteen-  million  four  hun¬ 
dred  thousand  acres  of  rich  and  fertile  land— 22,500  square 
miles— equal  in  round  numbers  to  the  aggregate  area  of  Massa¬ 
chusetts,  Connecticut,  New  Hampshire  and  Rhode  Island 
One  hundred  men  hold  title  to  17,000,000  acres  in  the  valley  of 
Sacramento  alone. 

tracTs  nfr<iwntly  frgarniZuid  ,trUS‘S  have  S°tten  control  of  vast 
oa  rnm  h  valuable  land  in  the  country.  The  Standard 

un  Company  counts  among  its  assets  more  than  a  million 
wrei  7  °K  1  ands\  The  Steel  Trust,  on  authority  of  Charles 

L  t  *"  T  tr?ct  c°ke  Iands  va,ued  at  $60,000,000. 

acres  !fUre,d  S_tates  Leather  Company  boasts  title  to  500,000 

Lv  F„,  7  wck  t‘mber-  The  'umber  companies  dominated 

areas  °f  St'  PaU'’  °Wn  and  contro*  timber 

areas  cover  ng  in  the  aggregate  more  than  30,000,000  acres 

Wisconsin.  *  ‘  '  am°UtU  °f  territory  '"eluded  in  the  state  of 

.1"  18i°  there  were  on'y  3,400  farms  in  the  United  States  that 

nuhinred  h°Te-  tlan  1’°,00  aCreS  each'  In  1880  this  had  been 
‘d  hy  "me— nearly  30,000.  In  1900  the  number  of  farms 

in  ";  nmg  mfre  tban  '>666  acres  had  jumped  to  nearly  50  000 
in  increase  of  nearly  66  per  cent. 

■JnhnV8!7tWenty'five  0Ut  of  every  hundred  farmers  in  the 
Jnited  States  were  tenant  farmers,  owning  no  land  of  their 

wn,  working  for  a  landlord  on  shares,  or  paying  rental  in  some 

leased  benty  yeari  'ater  the  total  numbe"  of  VrZrs  had Vn- 

armers  •hadTn°erree  d"  a  milH°n’  but  the  number  of  tenant 

mers  had  increased  even  more  rapidly.  In  1900  more  than 

hirty-five  and  a  half  out  of  every  hundred  were  woZg  land 


102 


that  belonged  to  somebody  else — and  that  in  a  country  where 
fifty  years  ago  the  refrain  of  a  popular  song  ran: 

“Come  along,  come  along,  don’t  you  take  alarm, 

For  Uncle  Sam  is  rich  enough  to  give  us  all  a  farm.” 


Mortgaged  Farms  on  the  Increase. 


According  to  the  United  States  Census  the  number  of  farms 
and  farm  homes  owned  free  and  owned  but  mortgaged  for  the 
last  three  censuses,  is  as  follows: 

Owners 

Year.  free. 

1890  . .  2,255,789 

1900  . * .  2,511,101 

1910  .  2,621,073 

The  percentages  of  free  and  of  mortgaged  owners  by  sec¬ 
tions  and  states  are  as  follows: 

PER  GENT  OF  TOTAL. 


Owners 

motgaged. 

886,957 

1,127,302 

1,327,649 


Per  cent 
mortgaged. 
28.2 
31.1 
33.6 


1910 

New  England  .  66.4 

Maine  .  65.1 

New  Hampshire .  73.4 

Vermont  .  74.4 

Massachusetts  .  53.1 

Rhode  Island  _ .....  59.1 

Connecticut  .  70.4 

Middle  Atlantic  .  56.8 

New  York  .  61.7 

New  Jersey  .  56.3 

Pennsylvania  . .  50.4 

East  North  Central......  68.9 

Ohio  .  69.1 

Indiana  . .  i 

Illinois  .  61.2 

Michigan  .  cV'o 

Wisconsin  . 

West  North  Central .  **8.6 

Minnesota  . 

Iowa  .  f83.7 

Missouri  . 

North  Dakota  .  i 

South  Dakota .  i 

Nebraska  .  «l-o 

Kansas  . . 

South  Atlantic  . 

Delaware  . . 

Maryland  .  .  .  . . 

District  of,  Columbia.  . 

Virginia  . 

West  Virginia  .  zi'X 

North  Carolina  .  81  5 

Carolina  ..*••••  q 


60.6 

55.2 

81.2 
62.8 

63.5 

81.6 
84.0 


South 

Georgia  .  81  0 

Florida  .  352 

East  South  Central  .....  77 '3 

Kentucky  .  80  4 

Tennessee  .  83*1 

Alabama  .  73.1 

Mississippi  .  67  1 

West  South  Central .  6SL4 

Arkansas  .  78.6 

Louisiana  .  81  !o 

Oklahoma  . . 56.5 

Texas .  66.7 

Mountain  .  79.2 

Montana  .  78.9 

Idaho  . 66.6 

Wyoming  .  80.3 

Colorado  .  73.6 

New  Mexico  .  94.6 

Arizona .  87.1 

Utah  .  77.1 

Nevada  . •  83.3 

Pacific  . •  •  •  63.2 

Washington  .  65.9 

Oregon  . 66.3 

California  .  59.5 


Owners 

Owners 

free. 

mortgaged. 

1900 

1890 

1910 

1900 

68.9 

71.8 

33.6 

31.1 

65.9 

71.7 

34.9 

34.1 

73.3 

77.9 

26.9 

26.7 

74.5 

78.2 

25.6 

25.5 

53.1 

55.7 

46.9 

46.9 

61.4 

69.5 

40.9 

38.6 

72.9 

80.9 

29.6 

27.1 

59.3 

68.9 

43.2 

40.7 

59.7 

63.0 

38.3 

40.3 

53.7 

55.8 

43.7 

46.3 

48.1 

51.1 

49.6 

51.9 

67.7 

72.6 

31.1 

32.3 

60.6 

62.4 

40.9 

39.4 

70.2 

71.1 

28.9 

29.8 

.  63.5 

66.9 

38.8 

36.5 

60.7 

63.3 

39.2 

39.3 

51.7 

50.6 

48.2 

48.3 

54.2 

57.1 

51.4 

45.8 

56.7 

52.0 

46.1 

44.3 

55.2 

53.6 

46.3 

44.8 

47.0 

46.7 

51.8 

53.0 

57.6 

63.6 

46.3 

42.4 

'  68.6 

51.3 

50.9 

31.4 

63.3 

47.6 

38.2 

36.7 

54.6 

48.0 

39.4 

45.4 

58.2 

44.5 

44.8 

41.8 

83.2 

92.6 

18.8 

16.8 

63.5 

70.6 

37.2 

36.5 

63.2 

70.0 

36.5 

36.8 

81.1 

95.9 

18.4 

18.9 

85.3 

96.8 

16.0 

14.7 

85.9 

87.0 

12.6 

14.1 

84.2 

95.1 

18.5 

15.8 

79.4 

92.0 

24.0 

20.6 

85.3 

96.6 

19.0 

14.7 

89.7 

97.1 

14.8 

10.3 

83.0 

95.5 

22.7 

17.0 

84.8 

95.9 

19.6 

15.2 

88.5 

96.8 

16.9 

11.5 

80.8 

95.6 

26.9 

19.2 

72.9 

92.3 

32.9 

27.1 

81.8 

95.2 

30.6 

18.2 

85.7 

95.8 

21.4 

14.3 

82.3 

96.0 

19.0 

17.7 

90.8 

43.5 

9.2 

76.6 

94*.  3 

33.3 

23.4 

85.6 

85.9 

20.8 

14.4 

86.0 

84.4 

21.1 

14.0 

83.6 

83.7 

33.4 

16.4 

87.8 

87.0 

19.7 

12.2 

73.0 

74.5 

26.4 

27.0 

97.7 

97.0 

5.4 

2.3 

94.0 

93.2 

12.9 

6.0 

88.9 

94.5 

22.9 

11.1 

80.7 

82.8 

16.7 

19.3 

72.4 

71.3 

36.8 

27.6 

78.3 

73.2 

34.1 

21.7 

74.8 

76.6 

33.7 

25.2 

67.8 

67.5 

40.5 

32.2 

1890 

28.2 

28.3 
22.1 
21.8 

44.3 

30.5 

19.1 

31.1 
37.0 

44.2 

48.9 

27.4 

37.6 

28.9 
33.1 

36. 7 

49.4 

42.9 
48.0 

46.4 

53.3 

36.4 

48.7 

52.4 
52.0 

65.5 

7.4 
29.4 
30.0 

4.1 

3.2 
13.0 

4.9 

8.0 

3.4 

2.9 

4.5 

4.1 

3.2 
4.4 

7.7 

4.8 

4.2 
4.0 


6.7 

14.1 

15.6 

16.3 
13.0 
25.5 

3.0 

6.3 

5.5 

17.2 

28.7 

26.8 

23.4 

32.5 


Note — Owned  farms  and  farm  homes  with  no  mortgage  report 
are  distributed  between  “owners  free”  and  “owners  mortgaged. 


Recent  Tendencies  in  Agricultural  Concentration. 


By  A.  M.  Simons. 

Present  day  American  agriculture  has  grown  directly  out! 
of  conditions  most  of  which  originated  in  the  years  directly 

~  H 


after  the  Civil  War.  At  this  time  the  most  extensive  effort 


103 


ever  tried  in  any  country  was  made  to  maintain  a  race  of  small 
farmers.  In  the  twenty  years  following  1860,  sixty-five  million 
acres  of  land  was  distributed  by  the  national  government  in 
small  farms.  A  much  larger  amount  was  given  to  the  rail¬ 
roads  during  this  same  period,  and  a  large  portion  of  this  was 
also  distributed  to  small  farmers. 

In  the  South  the  great'  plantations  were  divided  up  by  the 
destruction  of  the  system  of  chattel  slavery  into  hundreds  of 
thousands  more  small  farms. 

In  the  intense  competition  for  production  of  agricultural 
products  that  followed,  the  income  of  the  farmer,  like  that  of 
the  wage  worker,  was  reduced  to  the  point  which  would  sustain 
life  and  permit  a  continuance  of  the  race  of  farmers.  The  re¬ 
mainder  went  to  the  transportation,  storage  and  marketing 
companies  that  control  the  farmer’s  product  in  its  later  stages. 

By  1890  there  were  no  more  farms  to  be  distributed,  save 
.n  isolated  localities  or  after  the  expenditure  of  large  sums 
for  drainage  or  irrigation.  These  were  not  numerous  enough 
3r  in  sufficiently  active  connection  with  agriculture  as  a  whole 
i.o  act  as  an  outlet  for  the  farmers  who  were  being  crowded 
from  the  land  in  the  older  localities. 

The  twenty  years  since  1890  has  seen  the  transformation  of 
.hose  conditions  that  have  served  to  distinguish  agriculture 
rom  factory  industry.  It  has  seen  the  element  of  chance  largely 
diminated.  Agricultural  invention,  improved  machinery  and 
setter  breeding  of  plants  and  animals  have  not  only  greatly 
ncreased  the  product,  but  hav£  brought  conditions  of  production 
o  a  point  where  they  much  more  closely  approximate  those 
existing  in  the  mill,  mine  and  factory. 

The  disappearance  of  free  land  has  shown  itself  most  strik- 
ngly  in  the  tremendous  increase  in  the  cost  of  this  fundamental 
nstrument  of  production  in  -agriculture. 

In  the  200  years  in  which  the  continent  was  conquered, 
)rairie  sod  turned,  forests  cleared,  millions  of  farm  homes  and 
)ther  buildings  erected  and  during  which,  in  fact,  more  labor 
vas  applied  to  land  than  at  any  previous  time  in  the  history  of 
he  world,  the  total  value  of  -all  land  reached  only  a  little  over 
hirteen  billion  dollars.  In  the  last  ten  years,  when  less,  new 
and  was  brought  under  cultivation  than  at  any  period  in  the 
ast  half  century,  the  value  added  to  the  land  was  over  fifteen 
fillion  dollars.. 

This  great  increase  in  farm  values  has  been  most  marked 
hows  how  agriculture  is  concentrating  in  certain  localities, 
n  a  few  special  sections  and  is  only  a  part  of  a  movement  that 

In  the  states  touched  by  a  circle  with  a  500-mile  radius  and 
Chicago  as  its  center,  there  is  already  located  5 7.7  per  cent 
d  the  value  of  all  farm  property,  607  per  cent  of  the  value 
»f  all  farm  land,  51.3  per  cent  of  the  value  of  all  live  stock 
nd  68  per  cent  of  the  value  of  all  cereals  is  produced  It 
/as  just  in  this  territory  that  the  value  of  this  land  increased 
aost  rapidly,  over  60  per  cent  of  the  total  increase  in  the  last  ten 
ears,  being  in  the  states  touched  by  such  a  circle. 

Even  more  important  is  the  fact  that  fn  this  territory  the 
umber  of  farms  decreased  by  over  30,000  in  the  last  ten  years, 
iere  where  industry  is  most  profitable;  here  where  land  is 
ncreasing  most  rapidly  in  value;  here  where  the  product  is 
reatest;  here  the  children  of  the  farmers  are  being  driven 
rom  the  farms  and  the  number  of  opportunities  for  new  open- 
igs  in  agriculture  are  growing  constantly  less.  In  the  five 
tates  of  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Missouri  and  Iowa,  which 
3rm  the  heart  of  this  territory,  the  most  important  agricul- 
aral  section  of  the  United  States,  the  population  in  rural  lo- 
alities  absolutely  declined,  and  this  decline  in  farms  was  in 
iiose  operated  by  owners.  There  are  10,000  less  farms  oper- 


104 


ated  by  owners  in  Iowa  than  there  were  in  1900;  8,000  less  ir 
Indiana,  and  13,000  less  in  Illinois. 

In  1880,  69  per  cent  of  the  farms  of  Illinois  were  operated  by 
owners  and  31  per  cent  by  tenants;  in  1910  41  per  cent  were 
operated  by  tenants  and  but  59  per  cent  of  the  farmers  ownec 
the  land  upon  which  they  worked. 

In  the  counties  in  which  the  value  of  land  and  product  U 
greatest,  this  percentage  runs  much  higher. 

This  increase  in  tenantry  in  proportion  to  the  value  of  the 
product  and  to  the  perfection  of  agriculture  is  even  more  strik¬ 
ingly  seen  in  the  only  other  section  of  the  country  that  car 
rival  this  one  in  importance. 

In  the  cotton  section,  wherever  we  find  a  high  productior 
of  cotton,  we  find  a  high  ratio  of  tenantry.  In  Texas  55  pei 
cent  of  the  farms  are  now  operated  by  tenants;  in  Mississipp 
and  Georgia,  66  per  cent;  South  Carolina,  63  per  cent;  ir 
Louisiana  and  Oklahoma,  55  per  cent,  and  everywhere  this 
percentage  is  swiftly  increasing. 

When  the  counties  in  which  the  production  of  cotton  is 
greatest  are  studied,  this  percentage  rises  to  a  far  higher  point, 
In  the  six  leading  cofton  counties  of  Georgia,  the  percentage  of 
the  land  tilled  by  tenants  varies  from  73  per  cent  to  85  per 
cent;  in  the  six  leading  cotton  counties  of  South  Carolina, 
between  66  and  80  per  cent  of  the  farms  are  rented.  Missis¬ 
sippi  furnishes  a  most  striking  example  of  this  kind  of  evolution. 
Its  alluvial  bottoms  are  the  greatest  cotton-producing  country 
in  the  world.  There  are  eight  counties  here  where  the  average 
value  of  the  land  in  farms  is  more  than  $25  per  acre.  In  this 
section,  which  represents  the  very  apex  of  cotton  cultivation, 
89  per  cent  of  the  farms  were  operated  by  tenants  in  1900  and 
92  per  cent  in  1910. 

But  in  both  the  North  and  the  South,  a  new  force  is  coming 
in  to  hasten  every  one  of  the  tendencies  that  have  been  noted 
In  every  industry,  so  long  as  the  principal  operation  had  to  be 
performed  by  either  man  or  animal  power,  any  high  develop 
ment  of  concentrated  ownership  and  of  capitalist  exploitatior 
was  impossible.  In  farming  the  great  task  has  been  the  turning 
of  the  soil,  and  hitherto  this  has  been  done  by  animal  power] 
Now  the  farm  tractor  has  come,  driven  by  kerosene  or  gasolind 
or  steam  to  do  this  work,  and  is  bringing  the  same  revolution 
there  that  the  application  of  the  explosive  engine  has  brought 
in  transportation.  Although  these  tractors  are  of  very  receni 
introduction,  yet  they  are  already  accomplishing  a  revolution 
Their  great  expense  places  them  far  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
renter  or  even  the  small  farm  owner,  even  if  the  latter  were 
able  to  use  them  economically  on  his  small  acres.  These  ma 
chines  will  be  operated  by  mechanics — not  by  farmers,  wher 
necessary;  and  for  mechanics  the  entire  labor  supply,  trainee 
in  mines  and  mills  and  factories,  will  be  available. 

In  cotton  production  a  similar  mechanical  revolution  is  tak¬ 
ing  place.  Here  the  great  task  is  that  of  picking,  and  alread} 
mechanical  cotton  pickers  are  being  introduced  that  do  the 
work  of  from  sixteen  to  twenty  men. 

In  market  gardening  a  similar  transformation  is  taking  place 
Here  glass  covered  farms  with  heat  and  water  and  light,  con¬ 
trolled  artificially,  are  so  expensive  as  to  be  as  completely  be 
yond  the  reach  of  those  who  work  in  them  as  the  great  fac¬ 
tories  in  which  thousands  of  wage  workers  toil. 

To  sum  up,  the  disappearance  of  free  land  and  the  swift  rise 
in  farm  values  is  placing  the  lanej  out  of  the  reach  of  the  smal 
farmer.  The  race  of  tenants  is  increasing.  The  farm  tractor 
the  cotton  picker,  the  mechanical  milker,  the  great  invention.* 
now  in  use  in  the  production  of  vegetables  near  cities,  all  these 
are  tending  to  create  a  condition  in  which  the  worker  on  the 


*  1C3„ 

farm  win  be  as  completely  separated  from  the  instrument  with 
which  he  works  as  is  the  worker  in  the  factory. 

th/smsll"?!  lhe f  Socialist  or  the  working  class  who  are  taking 
the  small  farm  from  its  owner;  it  is  the  great  forces  of  capital¬ 
ism  which  are  fostered,  maintained  and  supported  in  every 
way  by  the  political  parties  of  the  capitalist  class.  The  Social¬ 
ist  Party  does  not  come  forward  to  assist  in  this  process  of 
reducing  the  farmer  to  the  condition  of  tenant  and  wage  worker 
The  Socialist  Party  comes,  on  the  contrary,  to  point  to  a  way 

L  7  (  the  possibility  of  release  for  the  farmer  now 

being  driven  from  his  land. 

*  *  * 

theSUnLtdi^arftiClenWaS  prepared  for  the  1912  campaign  book 
the  United  States  Department  of.  Agriculture  has  published  a 

aUmo«tn  N°'  u  MBUreaU  °f  Plant  Industry>  which  confirms  in 
a  ^?iSt  remarkable  manner  the  conclusions  drawn  above. 

The  investigators  of  the  Department  selected  three  typical 
areas,  one  each  in  Indiana,  Illinois  and  Iowa.  In  these  typical 
districts,  says  the  report,  “of  the  700  farms  studied,  57  per  cent 
were  operated  by  owners  and  43/per  cent  by  tenants.” 

0Ql%7Tirge-Capi!fUn7ienied  Per  farm  was  $17>535  in  Indiana, 
f?,1’??1  f  Illln?ls  and  $23,193  in  Iowa.  The  general  average  for 
all  the  farms  in  the  three  districts  was  $30,606,  a  far  greater 
suin  than  the  average  investment  in  manufacturing  or  trading 
On  these  farms  the  owners  who  worked  their  own  farms 
made  a  little  less  than  factory  wages.  The  report  says:  “De¬ 
ducting  5  per  cent  interest  on  the  average  capital  leaves  an 
iverage  labor  income  of  $408  for  the  273  farm  owners.  *  *  * 
The  assertion  that  farmers  are  making  large  profits  is  erroneous, 
rhey  are  living  on  the  earnings  of  their  investment  and  not  on 
he  ^  Profits  of  the  farm.  *  *  *  One  farmer  out  of  every 

wenty-two  received  a  labor  income  of  over  $2,000  a  year  One 

7erVh/ee.paid  f0r  the  P^dege  of  working  his 
arm  that  is,  after  deducting  5  per  cent  interest  on  his  invest- 
nent  he  failed  to  make  a  plus  labor  income.” 

But  labor  income  varies  almost  directly  in  proportion  to  in- 
estment  It  was  the  farmers  with  small  capital  who  made  no 
^ges  To  quote  again:  “The  247  tenant  farmers  made  an  aver¬ 
age  labor  income  of  $870  from  an  investment  of  less  than  $2,500 
7  hen  it  is  remembered  that  the  farm  owners  with  twelve 
imes  this  investment  made  less  than  half  the  labor  income  of 
enants,  the  evidence  is  unmistakable  that  the  man  with  small 
apital  should  rent  rather  than  buy  a  farm.”  The  report  does 
ot  point  out,  what  is  notorious,  that  landlords  are  constantly 
queezing  the  tenant  closer  .and  that  the  time  in  which  he  will 
e  permitted  to  make  this  income,  even  when  he  has  $2  500  of 
is  own  to  invest,  is  short. 

When  a  few  farms  of  exceptional  size  and  manifestly  poor 
ranagement,  which  yielded  a  “minus  income”  are  omitted 
ie  size  of  the  ‘labor  income"  increases  directly  in  proportion 
the  amount  of  capital  invested,  although  there  is  an  en- 
tavor  to  cover  up  this  fact  by  those  who  wrote  the  report,  and 
one  place  they  apparently  deny  it.  But  where  the  figures  are 
ven  they  say;  "It  will  be  noticed  that  of  the  entire  number 
ne,  men  with  less  than  $5,000  capital  received  $74  for  their 

nnnnW-  .  ?nly  ‘WO  farITVers  out  of  forty-six  with  less  than 
0,000  invested  made  over  $400.  Out  of  the  entire  273  only 

j  e  men,  received  over  $2,000  labor  income.  Each  of  these 
‘d  more  than  $20,000  invested.  The  chance  of  a  farm  owner 
aking  a  labor  income  of  $1,000  with  less  than  $15,000  in- 
'* less  than  one  in  twenty.”  This,  it  must  be  remembered, 
ates the  mOSt  favorable  agricultural  region  in  the  United 

But  the  tenant  without  capital  is  equally  helpless.  To  quote: 


106 


“Almost  without  exception  the  tenant’s  income  is  in  direct 
proportion  to  the  sum  he  has  invested.” 

These  are  all  the  phenomena  that  have  preceded  and  forced 
concentration  in  ownership  in  other  lines  of  industry.  That 
this  concentration  is  taking  place  is  noted:  “According  to  the 
last  census  the  farms  in  the  North  Central  States  are  growing 
fewer  in  number  and  larger  in  area.  *  *  *  Of  all  the  farms 

operated  by  owners  there  were  twenty  of  just  forty  acres  ir 
area,  the  average  labor  income  of  which  was  $70.  None  madt 
a  labor  income  of  $1,000.  There  were  twenty-six  men-  on  eighty 
acre  farms  and  only  one  of  them  made  a  labor  income  of  $1,000 
Of  the  twenty-five  men  on  160-acre  farms  one  in  five  mad* 
$1,000  or  more.”  In  other  words,  the  farm  of  less  than  16( 
acres  is  below  the  point  of  profitable  operation.  The  tabh 
giving  area  and  income  shows  a  continuous  and  unbroken  in 
crease  of  labor  income  as  the  acreage  of  the  farm  increase, 
*  and  the  reporters  comment  on  this  as  follows:  “Thus  the  de 
crease  in  the  number  of  farms  in  the  North  Central  States  is  n< 
cause  for  alarm.  It  is  rather  a  sign  that  land  is  being  utilize* 
more  efficiently  and  that  the  same  products  are  being  produce* 
at  less  cost.” 

This  is  a  complete  confirmation  of  the  Socialist  theory  o 
concentration,  buit  scarcely  carries  comfort  to  the  small  farn 
owner  who  is  being  forced  into  the  ranks  of  tenants  and  hire' 
laborers. 

What  Socialism  Will  Do  for  the  Farmer. 

The  Socialist  Party  proposes  to  do  all  in  its  power  to  Slle 
viate  the  condition  of  the  farmer  who  now  works  with  his  ow 
hands  on  his  little  bit  of  land;  but  it  is  not  blind  tp  the  fac 
that  all  the  Socialists  or  anyone  else  could  do  would  not  prc 
tect  him  in  that  ownership  against  the  powerful  forces  that  ar 
taking  his  farm  from  him.  So  the  party  comes  forward  wit 
the  proposal  ithat  producers  of  wealth  on  the  farm  shall  ipi 
with  those  of  the  factory  to  obtain  the  ownership  of  the  thing 
necessary  to  their  lives. 

Just  as  the  Socialist  Party  proposes  to  restore  the  owne: 
ship  of  the  factory  and  mill,  the  mines  and  the  railroads  t 
those  who  work  in  them  and  who  create  wealth  through  the 
use,  so  it  proposes  to  restore  the  lands  and  the  machinery  t 
the  men  who  produce  the  crops  of  this  country;  but  this  cai 
not  be  individual  ownership  in  either  case;  so  the  Sociali 
Party  believes  the  time  has  now  come  for  the  beginning  « 
socially-operated  farms;  these  farms  would  be  sufficiently  lar£ 
to  use  the  most  improved  machinery;  they  would  be  offitert 
and  directed  by  the  socially  trained  graduates  of  o'ur  agricc 
tural  educational  institutions  and  their  wealth  would  all  go 
those  who  produced  it  and  worked  upon  the  farm. 

Pending  the  time  when  such  farms  can  be  established,  tl 
following  program  adopted  at  our  National  Convention  pledg 
the  party  to  the  enactment  of  a  series  of  measures  especial 
designed  to  afford  relief  to,  the  great  class  of  workers  on  tl 
farm.  b  > 

Proposed  Farmers’  Program. 

1.  The  Socialist  Party  demands  that  the  means  of  trar 
portation  and  storage  and  the  plants  used  in  the  manufacture 
farm  products  and  farm  machinery  shall  be  socially  owned  a 
democratically  managed. 

2.  To  prevent  the  holding  of  land  6ut  of  use  and  to  elimms 
tenantry,  we  demand  that  all  farm  land  not  cultivated  by  ow 
ers  shall  be  taxed  at  its  full  rental  value,  and  that  actual  r| 
and  occupancy  shall  be  the  only  title  to  land. 

3.  We  demand  the  retention  by  the  national,  state  or  lo 


107 

governing  bodies  of  all  land  owned  by  them,  and  the  continu¬ 
ous  acquirement  of  other  land  by  reclamation,  purchase,  con¬ 
demnation,  taxation  or  otherwise;  such  land  to  be  organized  as 
rapidly  as  possible  into  socially  operated  farms  for  the  con¬ 
duct  of  collective  agricultural  enterprises. 

4.  Such  farms  should  constitute  educational  and  experi¬ 
mental  centers  for  crop  culture,  the  use  of  fertilizers  and  farm 
machinery,  and  distributing  points  for  improved  seeds  and  better 
breeds  of  animals. 

5.  The  formation  of  co-operative  associations  for  agricul¬ 
tural  purposes  should  be  encouraged. 

6.  Insurance  against  diseases  of  animals  and  plants,  insect 
pests  and  natural  calamities  should  be  provided  by  national, 
state  or  local  governments. 

7.  We  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  elimination  of  farm 

tenantry  and  the  development  of  socially  owned  and  operated 
agriculture  will  open  new  opportunities  to  the  agricultural  wage¬ 
worker  and  free  him  from  the  tyranny  of  the  private  employer. 

(b)  CONCENTRATION  IN  THE  OWNERSHIP  OF 
WATER  POWER. 

Monopolizing  the  Nation’s  Water  Ways.— From  “The  Beast,” 
by  Judge  Ben  B.  Lindsey.  (Published  by  Doubleday,  Page  & 

Company.) 

By  the  use  of  the  legislature,  the  courts  and  public  officials, 
the  corporations  are  establishing  a  power  trust  that  has  ob¬ 
tained  incredible  rights  in  all  the  watersheds  and  power  streams 
surrounding  Denver,  without  any  reservation  to  the  state  of 
the  people’s  rights  in  these  natural  resources;  so  that  our  chil¬ 
dren  and  our  children’s  children,  for  all  time  will  be  compelled 
.to  pay  the  heirs  of  the  Beast  for  the  right  to  use  the  water¬ 
power  that  should  have  been  an  asset  of  the  community  in¬ 
stead  of  an  asset  of  the  Beast. 

Concentration  of  Ownership  and  Control  of  Water  Power  in 
the  United  States. 

(From  the  Report  of  the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Cor¬ 
porations  on  Water  Power  Development,  March  14,  1912.) 

>  Excluding  developments  of  less  than  1,000  h.  p.  (horse  power), 
the  total  developed  water  power  of  the  United  States,  as  com¬ 
piled  by  the  Bureau,  is  4,016,127  h.  p. 

Three-fourths  of  this  is  “commercial  power”  (power  pro¬ 
duced,  for  sale).  (P.  xv,  Letter  of  Submittal.) 

This  report  shows,  an  increasing  concentration  of  the  con¬ 
trol  of  water  powers  by  certain  large  interests  (p.  xv,  Letter  of 
Submittal)  and  mentions  three  main  causes  of  the  consolida¬ 
tion  of  water  powers.  First,  economy  in  operation;  second, 
specialization  in  engineering  enterprise;  third,  the  elimination 
of  competition. 

Local  Concentration. — In  California  six  great  power  corpora¬ 
tions,  of  which  the  most  important  is  the  pacific  Gas  and  Elec¬ 
tric  Co.  (with  118,343  h.  p.),  together  control  375,000  h.  p.,  over 
86  per  cent  of  all  the  developed  water  power*  in  the  State. 

In  Washington  two  companies  control  210,000  h.  p.,  or  about 
70  per  cent  of  all  developed  water  power. 

In  South  Carolina  the  Southern  Power  Co.  owns  about 
101,000  h.  p.,  or  75  per  cent  of  the  total  commercially  developed 
with  73,000  h.  p.  undeveloped. 

In  the  Southern  Peninsula  of  Michigan  the  Commonwealth 
Power,  Railway  and  Light  Co.  controls  52,000  h.  p.,  or  73  per 
cent  of  the  commercially  developed,  together  with  probably 
71,000  h.  p.  more  undeveloped. 

Practically  similar  conditions  exist  in  Montana,  Colorado 
Georgia,  and  at  Niagara  Falls. 

Control  by  Interests. — More  important  still,  however,  are  the 


108 


great  groups  of  water  power  interests.  There  are  ten  groups  of 
interests,  each  controlling  or  influencing  through  mutual  direc¬ 
tors  and  officers  over  50,000  h.  p.  developed  and  under  con¬ 
struction.  By  far  the  widest  sphere  of  interest  is  that  of  the 
General  Electric  Co.,  primarily  an  electric  equipment  concern. 
The  General  Electric  influence  takes  three  forms:  First,  by 
absolute  control;  second,  through  interownership  of  stock  and 
community  of  directors;  third,  simply  community  of  directors. 
In  the  first  class  there  are  6  companies  with  about  83,000  h.  p. 
In  the  second  class  there  are  8  companies  with  about  419,000 
h.  p.  In  the  third  class  there  are  about  10  companies  with  about 
939,000  h.  p.  A  total  of  1,441,000  h.  p.  of  developed  water  power 
in  18  diflferent  States.  In  addition  this  group  controls  about 
640,000  h.  p.  undeveloped  a  grand  total  of  over  2,000,000  h.  p. 

•  Next  are  the  Stone  and  Webster  interests,  which  own  or 
strongly  influence  278,000  h.  p.  They  exercise  control,  largely 
through  management  rather  than  ownership,  over  55  or  60  com¬ 
panies.  (Page  xvii,  Letter  of  Submittal.) 

Interrelationship  of  Large  Interests.— There  is  still  a  wider 
community  of  interest.  Some  of  these  great  groups  show  more 
or  less  relationship  with  one  another.  The  two  greatest,  the 
General  Electric  and  the  Stone  &  Webster  groups,  have  di¬ 
rectors  in  a  number  of  the  same  corporations,  and  the  S.  Mor¬ 
gan  Smith,  Westinghouse,  and  Brady  interests  are  similarly 
connected. 

There  is,  furthermore,  an  increasing  affiliation  of  water  power 
concerns  and  public  service  corporations.  The  companies  in 
the  General  Electric  group  control  street  railways  in  16  towns, 
electric-lighting  plants  in  78,  and  gas  plants  in  19.  Altogether, 
water  power  or  allied  companies  own  or  control  and  operate 
street  railways  in  111  towns,  electric-lighting  plants  in  ,669 
towns,  and  gas  plants  in  113  towns. 

Interlocking  Directorates. — Men  who  are  officers  or  directors 
in  that  company  (General  Electric  Co.),  or  of  its  three  wholly 
controlled  subsidiaries,  are  also  officers  and  directors  in  many 
other  corporations.  About  20  General  Electric  men  in  all  con¬ 
stitute  most  of  this  chain  of  connection,  three  of  these  being 
members  of  the  firm  of  J.  P.  Morgan  &  Co.,  which  is  generally 
regarded  as  the  dominant  interest  in  the  General  Electric  Co. 
(Observe  how  every  industrial  function  is  gravitating  toward 
the  J.  P.  Morgan  center.) 

This  great  concentration  movement  is  in  a  field  where  the 
public  is  peculiarly  interested*  Power  is  at  the  foundation  of 
modern  industry.  *  *  *  The  need  for  water  power  develop¬ 

ment  is  obvious.  The  non-use  of  water  power  means  the 
diminution  of  our  other  sources  of  power.  The  water  power 
now  in  use  saves  at  least  33,000,000  tons  of  coal  annually. 
*  *  *  It  must  be  frankly  recognized  that  ’the  most  efficient 

use  of  water  power  requires  a  considerable  degree  of  unified 
control..  (Page  xix.*) 

The  concentration  of  ownership  of  developed  water  power 
has  steadily  growfi  until  in  any  given  community  it  is  usually 
all  under  a  single  control,  or  substantially  so.  (Page  ix.) 

Control  of  Water  Power  in  Specific  Localities. 

Mississippi  River  Power  Co. — At  Keokuk,  Iowa,  the  Missis¬ 
sippi  River  Power  Co.,  who  are  largely  British  and  Boston  citi¬ 
zens,  are  building  a  dam  across  the  Mississippi  River  which 
will  generate  225,000  kilowatts  of  power,  the  equivalent  of  over 
300,000  horsepower,  and  which  will  be  used  within  a  zone  of 
150  miles  radius  from  Keokuk.  St.  Louis,  Mo.,  135  miles  dis¬ 
tant,  has  contracted  for  60,000  horse  power  for  ninety-nine 
years. 

The  power  developed  there  amounts  to  one-fifth  of  all  the 


109 


water  power  now  harnessed  in  the  entire  U.  S.,  and  one-third 
of  the  entire  horse  power  used  in  the  State  of  Illinois,  including 
Chicago. 

This  work  is  being  completed  by  a  private  corporation,  capi¬ 
talized  at  about  $27,000,000  under  a  grant  by  the  United  States 
Government. 

Considering  the  development  and  the  fact  that  the  charge  for 
power  is  cheaper  than  at  Niagara,  also  the  water  ami  rail  facili¬ 
ties,  it  is  estimated  that  it  will  add  1,200,000  to  the  population 
within  a  radius  of  50  miles. 

Niagara  Falls.-All  of  the  262,000  h.  p.  on  the  American 
side  is  owned  by  two  companies— the  Hydraulic  Power  Co.  and 
the  Niagara  Falls  Po\yer  Co.  The  latter  company,  moreover, 

1  th!  St°ck  °f  the  Canadian  Niagara  Power  Co.,  with 
02,500  h  p.  developed,  on  the  Canadian  side.  *  *  * 

Jn  p*Jifornia  tbe  bulk  of  tbe  power  produced  in  the  northern 
half  of  the  State  is  controlled  by  a  single  interest,  and  that  in 
the  southern  half  by  only  two  companies.  In  Montana  two 
companies  control  96  per  cent  of  all  the  developed  power  of 
the  State;  and  in  Washington  a  single  interest  controls  the 
power  situation  in  the  Puget  Sound  region,  while  another  in¬ 
terest,  more  or  less  closely  affiliated  with  it,  controls  the  de¬ 
veloped  power  elsewhere  in  the  State.  All  the  developed  power 
in  the  vicinity  of  Denver,  Colo.,  and.  nearly  70  per  cent  of  the 
total  developed  power  of  the  State,  is  controlled  by  one  inter¬ 
est.  In  South  Carolina  one  corporation  owns  75  per  cent  of  the 
developed  commercial  power,  while  in  North  Carolina  45  per 
cent  of  such  power,  developed  and  under  construction,  is  con¬ 
trolled  by  a  single  interest.  One  group  of  interests  practically 
controls  58  per  cent  of  all  the  commercial  power,  developed  and 
under  construction,  in  Georgia. 

In  the  lower  Peninsula  of  Michigan  a  single  group  owns  73 
per  cent  of  all  such  power.  (Page  xiv.) 


Tables  Showing  Concentration  by  Interests. 


California.  (Map  opposite  page  106.) 

Pacific  Gas  &  Electric  Company . 

Sierra  &  San  Francisco  Power  Company! . 

Great  Western  Power  Company . 

Northern  California  Power  Company, 'consolidated 
Pacific  Light  &  Power  Company,  Corporation... 
South  California  Edison  Company... 

All  others  . 


Washington.  (Map  opposite  page  112.) 
Washington  Water  Power  Company, 

Pacific  Coast  Power  Company . 

City  of  Tacoma . 

City  of  Seattle . ! ! ' 

All  others  . 


Montana.  (Map  opposite  page  114.) 

Butte  Electric  &  Power  Company.... 
United  Missouri  River  Power  Company 
All  others  . 


Colorado.  (Map  opposite  page  116.) 
Central  Colorado  Power  Company 

Telluride  Power  Company  . 

All  others  . 


North  Carolina.  (Map  opposite  page  124.) 

Carolina  Power  &  Light  Company . 

North  Carolina  Power  &  Electric  Company 
North  Carolina  Electrical  Power  Company 
All  others  . 


South  Carolina.  (Map  opposite  page  124.) 

Southern  Power  Company  . 

All  others  . . 

Georgia.  (Map  opposite  page  128.) 

Smith  Interests  . 

Central  Georgia  Power  Company  . 

Columbus  Power  Company  . . 

All  others  . 


Michigan — Southern  Peninsula.  (Map  opposite  page  130 
Commonwealth  Power.  Railway  &  Light  Company...'. 
Indiana  &  Michigan  Electric  Company  .  . 

All  others  .  . 

Wisconsin.  (Page  133.)  . 

Three  companies  own  80  per  cent. 


) 


Per  cent 
owned. 
.  .  27 

. .  15 

.  .  14 

.  .  11 
.  .  11 
9 

.  .  13 

.  .  44 

.  .  26 
.  .  11 
7 

.  .  12 

.  .  50 

.  .  47 

3 

.  .  67 

.  .  14 

.  .  19 

.  .  45 

.  .  39 

9 
7 

.  .  75 

25 

.  58 

.  19 

9 
14 

.  73.  . 

.  13 

.  14 


110 


/  fc  . 


The  General  Electric  Company. — The  influence  of  the  Gen¬ 
eral  Electric  Co.  in  municipal  public  service  corporations  is 
by  no  means  confined  to  those  communities  that  have  water 
power.  It,  or  its  subsidiaries,  has  acquired  control  of  or  an  in¬ 
terest  in  the  public  service  corporations  of  numerous  cities 
where  there  is  no  water  power  connection,  and  it  is  affiliated 
with  still  others  by  virtue  of  common  directors.  (Page  160.) 

Strong  Financial  Position  of  the  General  Electric  Co. — The 
officers  and  directors  of  the  General  Electric  Co.  are  also  offi¬ 
cers  or  directors  in  more  than  50  banking  and  trust  companies, 
many  of  which  are  among  the  strongest  in  the  country. 

Probably  at  the  head  of  this  list  of  financial  institutions 
should  be  placed  J.  P.  Morgan  &  Co.  and  . the  Morgan  banking 
interests.  (Page  161.) 

The  ten  companies  or  groups  of  companies  that  control  more 
than  60  per  cent  of  all  the  commercial  power  developed  and 
under  construction  in  the  United  States  are:  General  Electric 
Interests,  939,115  h.  p.;  Stone  &  Webster  Interests,  278,067 
h.  p.;  Hydraulic  Power  Co.  of  Niagara  Falls,  114,000  h.  p.;  Pa¬ 
cific  Gas  &  Electric  Co.,  118,343  h.  p.;  Clark-Foote-Hodenpyl- 
Walbridge  Interests,  104,300  h.  p.;  Southern  Power  Co.,  101,680 
h.  p.;  S.  Morgan  Smith  Interests,  70,600  h.  p.;  Brady  Interests, 
70,600  h.  p.;  United  Missouri  River  Power  Co.,  65,000  h.  p.; 
Telluride  Power  Co.,  56,350  h.  p. 

The  five  largest  groups  of  holders  of  developed  water  power 
in  the  United  States  .control  more  than  50  per  cent  of  all  the 
commercial  power  developed  and  under  construction  in  the 
country,  besides  having  more  than  1,200,000  h.  p.  undeveloped. 
(Pages  180,  181.) 

There  is  an  interrelationship  of  these  groups,  themselves  (the 
General  Electric  Co.,  Stone  &  Webster,  S.  Morgan  Smith, 
Brady,  and  others),  that  suggests  the  possibility,  if  not  the 
probability,  of  still  greater  concentration.  (Page  182). 

Summary. — Summarizing  these  interrelationships  it  is  seen 
that  the  General  Electric  Co.  and  its  three  wholly  controlled 
subsidiaries  have  some  sort  of  connection  or  relation  with  at 
least  six  other  large  interests.  *  *  *  There  is  thus  brought 

into  more  or  less  close  relationship  a  vast  volume  of  water 
power  and  a  great  number  of  street  railway  and  lighting  com¬ 
panies,  besides  steam  railroads  and  a  number  of  the  largest 
banking  interests  in  this  country. 

There  is  here  presented  such  a  situation  in  water  powers  and 
other  public  utilities  as  might  bring  about  at  any  time  under  a 
single  management  the  control  of  a  majority  of  the  developed 
water  power  in  the  United  States  and  similar  control  over  the 
public  utilities  in  a  vast  number  of  cities  and  towns,  including 
some  of  the  most  important  in  the  country.  (Page  185.) 

Consolidations  of  Public-Service  Corporations  Themselves.— 
The  importance  of  the  relationship  between  water  power  con¬ 
cerns  and  public-service  corporations  is  greatly  enhanced  be¬ 
cause  of  the  fact  that  during  recent  years  there  has  been  a 
rapid  consolidation  of  gas  and  electric  lighting  companies  and, 
to  a  somewhat  less  extent,  a  consolidation  of  lighting  and  street 
railway  companies.  These  consolidations  are  not  confined  to 
single  cities;  but  in  several  instances  all  the  local  transit  and 
lighting  facilities  in  several  towns  have  been  gathered  under  a 
single  control.  *  *  * 

Concentration  along  this  line  is  constantly  increasing  in  scope 
and  strength.  There  are  steady  additions  to  the  list  of  public- 
service  agencies  controlled  by  or  affiliated  with  water  power 
concerns.  Combinations  heretofore  formed  are  being  merged 
into  larger  and  stronger  ones,  and  these  larger  units  of  rnan- 
agement  show  a  close  relationship  one  to  another.  (Page  189.) 


Ill 


(c)  CONCENTRATION  IN  THE  OWNERSHIP  OF 
TIMBER. 

(From  Concentration  and  Control.  Charles  R.  Van  Hise. 
Pages  156-159.  Published  by  the  Macmillan  Company.) 

Of  the  merchantable  saw  timber  of  the  United  States,  20 
per  cent  is  still  owned  by  the  government,  leaving  80  per  cent 
in  private  hands.  Of  the  vast  amount  of  timber  in  private 
holdings  the  concentration  of  ownership  is  shown  by  the  follow¬ 
ing  table: 

Table  46.  Concentration  of  Timber  Ownership  by  Groups,  Shown 
Cumulatively,  in  Entire  Investigation  Area. 

Number  of  Amount  of  timber  Per  cent  of 
holders.  owned  in  billions  total. 


of  feet. 

Total  .  1,747.0  100.0 

Group  1  .  3  237.5  13.6 

Groups  1-2  .  8  339.5  19.4 

Groups  1-3  .  22  459.0  26.2 

Groups  1-4  .  48  574.3  32.8 

Groups  1-5  90  690.5  39.5 

Groups  1-6  .  195  839.7  48.0 

Groups  1-7  .  385  972.1  55.6 

Groups  1-8  .  658  1,068.5  61.1 

Groups  1-9  .  1,147  1,153.3  66.0 

Groups  1-10  .  1,802  1,208.8  69.2 

Group  11  .  538.2  30.8 


From  this  table  it  will  be  seen  that  three  holdings  include 
no  less  than  237.5  billion  feet,  or  nearly  11  per  cent  of  the 
privately  owned  timber  in  the  entire  country,  and  over  13.5  per 
cent  of  the  privately  owned  timber  in  the  investigation  area.  These 
three  holders  are  the  Southern  Pacific  Company,  the  Weyerhaeu¬ 
ser  Timber  Company  and  the  Northern  Pacific  Railway  Company. 
Five  other  holders  ranking  next  in  importance  own  in  the 
investigation  area  an  aggregate  of  102  billion  feet,  or  4.6  per 
cent  of  the  total  privately  owned  timber  of  the  country  and  5.8 
per  cent  of  that  in  the  investigation  area.  Thus  the  eight  large 
holders  together  own  approximately  340  billion  feet  of  timber, 
or  15.4  per  cent  of  the  total  privately  owned  timber  of  the 
country  and  19.4  per  cent  of  that  in  the  investigation  area. 

Twenty-two  holders  own  26.2  per  cent  of  all  the  timber  in 
the  investigation  area;  195  holders  own  48  per  cent.  Stated  in 
another  way,  more  than  one-eighth  of  the  total  timber  in  the 
investigation  area  (this  representing  80  per  cent  of  the  total 
privately  owned  timber  of  the  United  States)  is  owned  by  only 
3  holders;  more  than  one-fourth  is  owned  by  only  22  holders. 
Almost  one-half  is  owned  by  195  holders. 

The  most  rnarke^  concentration  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
comparatively  few  lar^e  holders  of  the  upper  groups;  the  lower 
groups  control  a  much  less  important  percentage.  Thus,  while 
th£  385  holders  in  groups  1  fo  7,  inclusive,  control  55.6  per  cent 
of  the  timber  in  the  investigation  area,  the  273  holders  in  group 
8  control  only  5.5  per  cent,  the  489  holders  in  group  9  only  4.9 
per  cent,  and  the  655  holders  in  group  10  only  3.2  per  cent. 

Furthermore,  these  10  groups,  1,802  holdings,  embrace  nearly 
70  per  cent  of  the  total  timber  in  the  investigation  area,  while 
group  11,  the  remaining  holdings,  aggregating  unnumbered  thou¬ 
sands,  have  in  all  only  538.2  billion  feet,  or  30.8  per  cent  of  total. 
Concentration  of  Timber  Qymership  by  Groups,  Shown  Cumu¬ 
latively,  in  Pacific  Northwest. 

Number  of  Amount  of  timber  Per  cent  of 
holders.  owned  in  total. 


billions  of  feet. 

Total  .  1,013.0  100.0 

Group  1  3  237.5  23.5 

Groups  1-2  .  8  338.9  33.5 

Groups  1-3  .  20  436.3  43.1 

Groups  1-4  .  38  507.3  50.1 

Groups  1-5  .  64  471.9  56.5 

Groups  1-6  .  131  663.8  65.6 

Groups  1-7  .  217  723.0  71  4 

Groups  1-8  .  313  757.3  74.8 

Groups  1-9  .  489  789.1  77  9 

Groups  1-10  .  711  807.4  79  7 

Group  11  .  205.6  20.3 


The  pronounced  concentration  of  timber  ownership  in  the 
Pacific  Northwest  is  at  once  apparent  from  this  table.  The  3 
largest  companies  own  over  23  per  cent  of  the  total,  or  almost 
one-fourth,  while  5  more  own  10  per  cent,  these  8  holders  hav¬ 
ing  a  little  more  than  a  third  of  the  total  for  this  region.  The 
next  12  holders  own  over  9  per  cent,  giving  the  20  principal 
holders  43  per  cent  of  the  total.  The  next  18  own  7  per  cent; 
thus  no  less  than  50  per  cent  of  the  total  privately  owned'  timber 
in  this  vast  region  is  in  the  hands  of  38  holders.  The  next  6 
groups,  comprising  673  holders,  together  own  less  than  30  per 
cent  of  the  total. 

Concentration  of  ownership  in  the  southern  pine  belt  and  in 
the  lake  region,  while  great,  is  not  so  far  advanced  as  in  the 
Pacific  Northwest.  In  all  regions  the  concentration  is  greater 
for  the  high-class  timber,  such  as  fir,  pine  and  cypress,  than  it 
is  for  the  less  valuable  hard  wood. 

The  National  Conservation  Commission,  in  their  report  of 
1909,  Vol.  I,  pages  52-53,  say: 

“Our  forests  now  cover  550,000,000  acres,  or  about  one- 
fourth  of  the  United  States.  The  original  forests  covered  not 
less  than  850,000,000  acres. 

“Forests  publicly  owned  contain  one-fifth  of  all  timber  stand¬ 
ing.  Forests  privately  owned  contain  at  least  four-fifths  of 
the  standing  timber.  The  timber  privately  owned  is  not  only 
four  times  that  publicly  owned,  but  it  is  generally  more  valuable. 

“Forestry,  is  not  practised  on  seventy  per  cent  of  the  forests 
publicly  owned,  and  on  less  than  one  per  cent  of  those  pri¬ 
vately  owned,  or  on  only  about  eighteen  per  cent  of  the  total 
area  of  forests.” 

How  It  Stands  Today. 


Original  forests,  approximately . 1,000,000,000  acres 

Exhausted  up  to  the  present  time .  450,000,000  acres 

Forest  resources  remaining  .  550,000,000  acres 

Forests  privately  owned,  4/5  of  the  acreage  re¬ 
maining,  or .  440,000,000  acres 

Forests  publicly  owned,  1/5  of  the  total,  or _  110,000,000  acres 


(d)  CONCENTRATION  IN  THE  OWNERSHIP  OF  OIL. 

(From  Concentration  and  Control,  Charles  R.  Van  Hise,  pages 
104-105.  Published  by  Macmillan  Company.) 

The  report  of  the  Bureau  of  Corporations  upon  the  Standard 
Oil  Company  was  published  in  1907,  and  includes  no  account  of 
the  business  to  and  including  the  year  1906.  The  facts  here 
stated  are  to  be  considered  as  of  that  date. 

The  Standard  Oil  Company,  with  its  various  affiliated  con¬ 
cerns,  handled  84.2  per  cent  of  the  crude  oil  which  goes  to  the 
refineries  in  the  United  States.  One  refinery,  that  at  Bayonne, 
New  Jersey,  consumed  more  crude  oil  than  all  the  independent 
plants  of  the  country. 

The  Rise  of  the  Company. — The  rule  of  the  Standard  Oil 
Company  began  with  the  union  of  several  large  refining  com¬ 
panies  into  a  partnership  known  as  Rockefeller,  Andrews  & 
Flagler,  in  1867.  Three  years  later  this  partnership  was  suc¬ 
ceeded  by  the  Standard  Oil  Company  of  Ohio,  with  a  capitaliza¬ 
tion  of  $1,000,000;  and  with  its  organization  began  the  campaign 
for  the  control  of  the  refining  business  of  the  country.  When 
the  company  was  formed  it  did  not  control  more  than  10  per 
cent.  Within  ten  years  the  Standard  Oil  and  associated  com¬ 
panies  controlled  about  90  per  cent.  Monopoly  was  accom¬ 
plished  in  a  decade. 

Not  only  did  this  company  control  the  refining  business,  but 
it  controlled  every  important  pipe  line  in  the  oil  fields.  The 
only  serious  competitor  was  the  Tide  Water  Pipe  Line  Company, 
which,  however,  in  a  few  years  passed  to  the  Standard.  Thus 
the  Standard  for  many  years  had  no  rival  in  pipe  line  trans- 


7 


I 

113 

mission  of  oil  to  the  Atlantic  coast;  and  at  no  time  was  there 
more  than  one  independent  pipe  line  to  the  seaboard,  and  this 
much  smaller  than  tfiose  of  the  Standard  Oil. 

In  1882  the  Standard  Oil  interests  formed  the  Standard  Oil 
Trust,  under  which  the  entire  stock  holdings  of  fourteen  com¬ 
panies  and  a  majority  interest  in  twenty-six  additional  con¬ 
cerns  were  held  by  trustees.  The  capitalization  of  the  trust  at 
that  time  was  $70,000,000,  and  the  appraised  value  of  its  property 
in  excess  of  $55,000,000.  Of  the  $70,000,000  trust  certificates 
nine  of  the  trustees  owned  more  than  $46,000,000.  The  appraised 
value  of  the  trust  by  1892  had  accumulated  to  $126,000,000.  As 
a  result  of  a  decision  against  the  Standard  Oil  Company  of  Ohio 
in  1882  and  contempt  proceedings,  the  Standard  Oil  Company 
of  New  Jersey  was  organized,  but  not  until  1897. 

Thus  the  Standard  Oil  Company  of  New  Jersey,  a  holding 
concern,  was  a  direct  successor  to  the  trust,  the  only  difference 
being  that  the  holding  company  owned  all  of  the  stock  of  the 
subsidiary  companies,  instead  of  being  a  trustee  for  this  stock; 
each  alike  controlled  the  business  of  the  subsidiary  companies, 
and  received  and  distributed  all  dividends.  The  officers  of  the 
constituent  companies  in  one  case  had  their  orders  from  the 
trustees,  in  the  other  from  the  officers  of  the  corporation,  com¬ 
posed  of  substantially  the  same  men. 

The  authorized  capital  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company  of  New 
Jersey  was  $100,000,000,  of  which  $98,338,300  was  issued.  The 
Standard  Oil  Company  included  in  America  eleven  companies 
mainly  engaged  in  refining,  five  lubricating  oil  companies,  three 
crude  oil  companies,  fourteen  pipe  line  companies,  a  tank  line 
company,  six  marketing  companies,  and  sixteen  natural  gas 
companies.  Its  business  abroad  was  done  through  sixteen  com¬ 
panies.  In  addition  to  these  companies,  seven  pipe  lines  and 
refining  companies  were  closely  affiliated  with  or  controlled  by 
the  Standard  Oil  Company. 

(e)  CONCENTRATION  IN  THE  OWNERSHIP  OF  MIN¬ 
ERAL  RESOURCES. 

Of  the  mineral  resources  of  the  nation,  coal  and  iron  are  the 
most  important.  Both  have  been  and  are  being  monopolized 
ind  exploited. 

According  to  President  Van  Hise,  of  the  Wisconsin  Univer- 
>ity,  three-fourths  of  all  the  available  iron  ore  of  the  nation  is 
n  the  Lake  Superior  region.  Seventy-five  per  cent  of  this  iron 
Dre  is  owned  already  by  the  steel  corporation,  and  not  less  than 
ifty  per  cent  of  all  the  iron  ore  of  the  nation  is  owned  by 
his  single  corporation.  (‘^Conservation  of  Natural  Resources 
ff  the  United  States,”  page  65.) 

Fully  seven-eighths  of  the  coal  fields  of  the  nation  have  al- 
•eady  passed  into  private  hands  and  are  being  exploited  to  the 
imit.  During  recent  years  some  effort  has  been  made  to 
stop  the  monopolization  of  these  natural  resources.  Several 
nillions  of  acres  of  land  containing  coal  deposits  have  been 
vithdrawn.  The  proportion,  however,  is  only  a  small  fraction. 
The  coal  companies  continue  to  extend  their  ownership  and  ex- 
►loitation  of  these  natural  resources. 

According  to  the  United  States  Geological  Survey  on  “Min- 
ral  Resources  of  the  United  States”— 1910,  Part  II,  pages  26-27, 
he  original  coal  producing  area  of  the  United  States  amounted 
o  198,589,440  acres.  According  to  President  Van  Hise,  25,559,- 
>00,  or  about  one-eighth  of  the  total  area  of  coal  bearing  lands, 
lave  been  withdrawn.  This  leaves  in  private  hands  at  the 
►resent  time  nearly  seven-eighths  of  the  total  coal  fields  of  the 
lation,  or  173,000,000  acres. 

(From  National  Socialist  Handbook  No.  2.) 

One  of  the  most  significant  facts  revealed  in  the  Census 


114 


Bureau  s  bulletin  on  mines  and  quarries  is  that  concentration 
has  proceeded  even  further  in  this  branch,  of  industry  than  in 
manufacturing.  In  the  factories  of  the  nation  11.5  per  cent  of  the 
total  number  of  establishments  produced,  in  1909,  82.2  per  cent 
of  the  total  product.  In  the  mining,  quarrying  and  petroleum 
and  gas  industries  7.1  per  cent  of  the  operators  produced  84.6 
per  cent  of  the  total  product. 


Concentration  in  the  Ownership  of  the  Means  of 
Production  and  Distribution. 


(a)  CONCENTRATION  IN  MANUFACTURE. 


(Thirteenth  Census  of  United  States 

and  27.) 

1909. 

Total  establishments  .  268,491 

Number  operated  by  corporations...  69,501 

Per  cent  of  total . .  25.9 

Value  of  Product*. 
Establishments  operated  by  corpora¬ 
tions  . $16, 341, 116, 634 

Per  cent  of  total  .  79.0 

Establishments  reporting  products 

valued  at  $1,000,000  or  over .  3,061 

Per  cent  of  total  .  *  l.i 

Value  of  products  of  these  establish¬ 
ments  . $  9,053,698,364 

Per  cent  of  total  .  43  8 


Manufactures,”  Pages  24 


1904. 
216,180 
51,097 

2$. I 


$10,904,069,307 

73.7 


1,900 

.» 


5,628,455,171 

38.6 


These  figures  are  far  more  significant  than  appears  at  first 
blush.  They  show  in  another  way  (what  has  been  demon¬ 
strated  again  and  again  in  this  book  by  federal  statistics)  the 
enormous  centralizing  of  the  processes  of  production — the  ab¬ 
sorbing  by  the  great  enterprises  of  all  the  country’s  industry— 
the  inevitable  stamping  out  of  small  business  concerns.  In 
1904  the  number  of  establishments  producing  a  million  dollars 
worth  of  wealth  or  more  was  logs  than  1  per  cent  of  the  total 
number  of  manufactories;  yet  these  establishments  turned  out 
38  per  cent  of  the  total  manufactured  product  of  tfrfe  United 
States.  In  1909  the  million-dollar  product  plants  were  over  one 
per  cent  of  the  total  number  of  manufactories,  and  turned  out 
44  per  cent  of  the  total  product. 


There  were  1,900  of  these  establishments  in  1904  and  3,061 
in  1909.  Counting  the  establishments  producing  more  than 
$100,000  in  values  annually,  it  is  shown  that  in  1904  11.2  per 
cent  of  the  total  of  216,180  establishments  turned  out  79.3  per 
cent  of  the  total  product,  and  that  in  1£09  11.5  per  cent  of  the! 
total  of  268,491  establishments  turned  out  82.2  per  cent  of  the 
total.  The  other  88.5  per  cent  of  the  establishments  had  to  be 
satisfied  with  the  leavings  of  17.8  per  cent  of  the  product. 


(Table  on  Page  26  -  of  Bulletin  on  Manufactures,  Thirteenth 
Census,  Page  26.) 


Value  of 
products: 


Number 
of  estab¬ 
lishments. 

All  classes — 

1909  . 268,491 

1904  . 216,180 

Less  than  $5,000 — 

1909  .  93,349 

1904  .  71,147 

$5,000  and  less  than 
$20,000— 

1909  .  86,989 

1904  .  72,792 

$20,000  and  less  than 

$100,000— 

1909  .  57,269 

1904  .  48,096 

$100,000  and  less 

$1,000,000— 

1909  .  27,823 

1904  .  22,246 

$1,000,000  and  over — 

1909  .  3,061 

1904  .  1,900 


Av.  No.  Value 

of  wage  of 

earners.  products. 


Value  adde& 

by 

manufacture! 


6,615,046  $20,672,051,870  $8,530,260,992 

5,468,383  14,793,902,563  6,293,694,751 


142,430 

106,353 


222,463.847 

176,128,212 


144,246,00? 

141,781,124 


470,075 

419,466 


904,724,296 

751,047,759 


509,954,621 

424,129,641 


1,090,380 

1,027,047 


2,544,348,079 

2,129,257,883 


1,258.271,304! 

1,090,271,881 


2.896,475 

2,515,064 


7,946,817,284 

6,109,021,538 


3,572,653,161 

2,782,641,8*1 


2,015.686 

1,400,453 


9,653,698,364 

5,628,456,171 


3,045,135,814 

1,881,870,211 


115 


Value  of 

Number 

Av.  No. 

Value  Value  added 

products:  of  estab- 

of  wage 

of 

by 

lishments. 

earners. 

products. 

manufacture. 

Per  cent  of  total — 
1909  . 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.® 

1904  . 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

Less  than  $5,000 — 
1909  . 

.  34.8 

2.2 

1.1 

1.7 

1904  . . 

32.9 

1.9 

1.2 

1.8 

$6,000  and  less  than 
$20,000— 

1909  . 

32.4 

7.1 

4.4 

6.0 

1904  . 

33.7 

7.7 

5.1 

6.7 

$20,000  and  less 
than  $100,000 — 
1909  . 

21.3 

16.5 

12.3 

14.7 

1904  . .  ... 

22.2 

18.8 

14.4 

17.3 

$100,000  and  less 
than  $1,000,000 
1909  . 

10.4 

43.8 

38.4 

41.1 

1904  . 

10.3 

46.0 

41.3 

44.2 

$1,000,000  and  over 

1909  . 

1904  . 

1.1 

30.5 

43.8 

35.7 

0.9 

25.6 

38.0 

29.9 

Average  per  estab- 
listment — 

1909  . 

25 

$31,771 

1904  . 

25 

29,113 

According  to  this  table,  from  1904  to  1909  the  value  of  prod- 
(  ucts  increased  approximately  six  billion  dollars;  the  increase 
in  the  value  of  products  in  establishments  reporting  products 
valued  at  $1,000,000  and  over,  (about  1  per  cent  of  the  total  num¬ 
ber)  was  nearly  four  billion  dollars,  or  two-thirds  of  the  total 
increase.  The  rest  of  the  increase  (two  billion  dollars)  was 
:  distributed  pretty  generally  over  the  smaller  establishments 
(99  per  cent  of  the  total  number). 

“During  the  ten  years,  frpm  1899  to  1909,  the  number  of 
-  establishments  increased  29.4  per  cent;  the  capital  employed, 

:  105.3  per  cent;  the  average  number  of  wage  earners,  40.4  per 
cent;  the  value  of  products,  81.2  per  cent;  and  the 'Value  added 
i  by  manufacture,  76.6  per  cent.”  (Page  4,  Bulletin  of  Manu- 
t  facture,  13th.  Census.) 

Further  evidence  of  concentration  is  found  in  the  fact  that 
i  the  amount  of  capital  employed  increased  more  than  3%  times 
as  much  as  the  number  of  establishments.  The  value  of  products 
increased  nearly  three  times  as  much  as  the  number  of  estab¬ 
lishments. 

From  1904  to  1909  the  number  of  establishments  producing 
distilled  liquors  decreased  from  805  to  613,  but  the  value  of 
their  product  increased  from  $101,537,912  to  $148,433,755. 

In  smelting  and  refining  copper  the  number  of  establishments 
dropped  from  40  to  38,  while  the  value  of  products  advanced 
from  $238,328,190  to  $375,135,093.  The  number  of  tobacco  es¬ 
tablishments  decreased,  but  the  value  of  their  product  nearly 
doubled.  (Page  27,  Bulletin  on  Manufacturers,  13th  Census.) 
The  figures  are: 

No.  establishments.  Value  of  products. 


1904  .  16,827  $128,000,821 

1909  .  15,822  203,894,122 


Ownership  by  Corporations. 

“Of  the  total  number  of  establishments  reported  as  engaged 
in  manufacturing  industries  in  1909,  25.9  per  cent  were  under 
corporate  ownership.  The  corresponding  figure  for  1904  was 
23.6  per  cent.  While  corporations  thus  controlled  only  about 
one-fourth  of  the  total  number  of  establishments,  they  gave 
employment  to  a  large  proportion  of  all  wage  earners  reported, 
namely  75.6  per  cent  in  1909  and  70.6  per  cent  in  1904. 

“The  value  of  the  products  of  the  factories  operated  by  cor¬ 
porations  represented  79  per  cent  of  the  total  value  of  products 
for  all  establishments  in  1909  and  73.7  per  cent  in  1904.”  (Page 
23,  Bulletin  of  Manufactures,  13th  Census.) 

Commenting  further  upon  this  point  of  concentration,  the 
Report  says,  on  page  28:  “The  industry  in  which  establish- 


116 

ments  reporting  products  of  the  value  of  $1,000,000  or  more  con¬ 
stitute  the  largest  proportion  of  the  total  number  of  establish¬ 
ments  is  the  smelting  and  refining  of  copper,  followed  in  order 

mi  \,Smelt,ing  and  refinin&  of  lead,  steel  works  and  rolling 
mills,  blast  furnaces,  the  refining  of  petroleum,  and  the  con- 

inmCtl0ntrf  steam  railroad  cars.  In  each  of  these  industries  in 
1909  establishments  of  this  class  constituted  more  than  one-fifth 
of  the  total  number,  and  in  the  smelting  and  refining  of  copper 
they  constituted  about  five-sixths  of  the  total.  In  these  indus¬ 
tries,  moreover,  establishments  of  this  size  reported  excep¬ 
tionally  high  proportions  to  the  total  value  of  products.  The 
smelting  and  refining  of  lead  and  copper  ranked  highest  in  this 
respect,  with  99.2  and  99  per  cent,  respectively,  of  the  total 
value  of  products  reported  by  establishments  with  a  value  of 
products  above  $1,000,000.  The  slaughtering  and  meat-packing 
industry,  also,  though  its  proportion  of  large  establishments 
is  not  conspicuously  high,  shows  a  very  high  proportion  of  the 
total  value  of  products,  85.8  per  cent,  reported  from  such  es¬ 
tablishments.” 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  latest  figures  on  manufacturing 
in  the  United  States  show  that  the  same  tendencies  of  concen¬ 
tration  that  have  been  going  on  everywhere  for  the  last  fifty 
years,  have  been  marching  steadily  forward  during  the  last  ten. 

(b)  CONCENTRATION  IN  MERCANTILE  ESTABLISH¬ 
MENTS. 

The  Department  and  “Chain”  Stores. 

(From  Russell’s  “Business.”) 

More  and  more  in  the  cities  and  towns  the  independent  busi¬ 
ness  man  is  being  overwhelmed  by  the  advance  of  the  depart¬ 
ment  store,  hvhile  in  the  country  and  in  the  small  towns  loom  up 
the  mail-order  house  and  the  “chain.” 

The  natural  impulse  is  to  think  that  these  changes  must  be 
due  to  the  evil  ways  and  inordinate  greed  of  certain  men,  and 
that  our  first  duty  is  to  restrain  such  men.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
no  conceivable  power  can  stop  these  developments,  and  they 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  greed  of  any  man.  They  are  simply 
Business  in  the  present  stage  of  evolution.  Greater  econ¬ 
omies,  greater  efficiency,  greater  profits  lie  in  combination,  con¬ 
centration,  organization,  the  simplification  of  processes.  That 
is  all — and  enough.  Human  power  could  not  check  any  such 
development  any  more  than  it  could  reverse  the  sea-tides. 

All  lines  of  commercial  activity  are  profoundly  affected  by 
this  mutation.  For  years  we  have  been  familiar  with  the  prog- 
less  of  the  Trust  movement  in  enterprises  requiring  great  cap¬ 
ital,  as  in  transportation  and  manufacturing.  Possibly  we  have 
not  always  no,ted  that  the  same  development  is  rapidly  changing 
over  retail  trade  from  an  inorganic  to  an  organic  state.  Yet  it  is. 

Take  the  most  familiar  and  necessary  divisions  of  retail  trade. 
Take  a  thing  as  familiar  as  the  corner  grocery.  For  years  it 
has  been  subjected  to  the  increasing  competition  of  the  depart¬ 
ment  store.  What  is  left  from  that  struggle  seems  doomed  now 
to  be  absorbed  into  the  newly  evolved  “chain,”  which  is  con¬ 
solidation  under  another  name.  All  persons  can  not  journey  to 
the  department  store  to  purchase  all  their  supplies,  but  the 
neighborhood  grocery  store  that  lies  by  their  doors  may  be 
as  much  a  part  of  the  combination  and  as  much  of  a  machine 
as  any  department  store.  And  that  is  what  is  now  going  on.. 
The  independent  grocer  is  being  eliminated. 

One  combination  in  New  York  City  now  owns  a  hundred  and 
ninety  grocery  stores  and  steadily  adds  to  its  list.  It  is  by  no 
means  alone  in  the  city  or  country.  Another  “chain”  extends 
through  the  Eastern  States  and  has  operated  in  the  smaller 


117 


towns  with  no  less  success,  while  a  third  great  “chain”  is  de¬ 
veloping  in  the  South. 

Wherever  a  “chain  store”  appears  it  means  an  independent 
tradesman  turned  into  a  wage-earning  employee. 

Or  take  the  drug  store.  Two  companies  in  New  York  now 
own  or  control  nearly  one-fourth  of  the  drug  stores  in  the  city 
and  certainly  continue  to  absorb  others.  Twenty-five  years  ago 
the  ambition  and  assured  expectation  of  every  young  man  that 
studied  pharmacy  was  to  have  a  drug  store  of  his  own.  Today 
his  expectation  is  to  obtain  a  salaried  position  with  some  com¬ 
pany  that  owns  one  of  the  chains”  stretching  about  the  coun¬ 
try.  Not  only  have  the  “chains”  absorbed  a  great  part  of  the 
drug  business,  but  the  next  inevitable  step  has  even  now  begun. 
These  “chains”  are  now  in  process  of  assimilation  by  the  two 
great  Central  Interests  in  finance  that  control  the  greater  part 
of  the  money  supply  and  therefore  will  inevitably  continue  to 
absorb  one  developed  enterprise  after  another.  Within  a  year 
of  this  writing  one  of  these  “chains”  of  drug  stores  has  fallen 
into  the  hands  of  the  American  Tobacco  Interests,  which  in 
turn  are  a  part  of  the  Standard  Oil  group.  What  chance  of 
competition  does  that  leave  to  the  independent  druggist? 

Or  shall  we  take  the  shoe  trade?  The  great  shoe  manufac¬ 
turing  companies  with  their  hundreds  of  retail  stores  have  made 
the  independent  shoe  dealer  comparatively  rare  and  will  make 
him  rarer.  When  the  great  company  undertakes  not  only  to 
make  the  shoe,  but  to  vend  it  and  to  eliminate  all  profits  be¬ 
tween,  what  chance  on  earth  has  the  middleman? 

Or  shall  we  take  bakeries?  Early  in  1910  a  hundred  and 
sixty  independent  bakeries  in  New  York  City  were  absorbed  into 
one  company  with  $6,000,000  capital.  Of  this  “chain”  com¬ 
pany  each  formerly  independent  bakery  is  now  a  branch  with  a 
salaried  manager  in  the  place  where  he  was  once  owner.  The 
success  of  this  enterprise  is  already  so  apparent  that  another 
on  similar  lines  is  .  being  formed,  to  be  followed  doubtless  by 
still  others. 

•,  Or  shajl  we  take  confectionery?  You  must  have  noticed  in 
every  considerable  city  confectionery  stores  with  the  same 
name,  but  you  may  not  be  aware  that  this  name  covers  a  stead¬ 
ily  lengthening  “chain”  nor  that  it  is  already  controlled  by  one 
of  the  final  powers  of  American  Business.  But  you  surely  must 
have  observed  that  in  these  days  the  cigar  and  confectionery 
counters  are  two  very  important  adjuncts  in  the  typical  drug 
store,  and  you  should  be  interested  to  know  next  that  the 
American  Tobacco  group,  which  has  lately  gone  so  heavily  into 
the  retail  drug  business,  can  now  supply  its  own  drug  stores 
with  its  own  cigars  and  its  own  confectionery. 

Against  such  a  condition  competition  by  the  druggist  not  yet 
absorbed  must  seem  like  a  forlorn  hope. 

Or  shall  we  take  restaurant  keeping?  The  Standard  Oil 
interests  control  one  “chain”  of  restaurants  and  the  American 
Tobacco  interests  control  another. 

Or  printing?  One  house  in  New  York  issues  and  prints 
twenty  periodicals,  and  the  small  independent  printer,  like  the 
small  independent  publisher,  is  disappearig. 

Milk?  The  Central  Interests  own  the  Milk  Trust. 

Foundries  or  iron  works?  The  Steel  Trust  looks  after  them. 

Tobacco?  The  United  Cigar  Stores  Company  owns  about 
seven  hundred  retail  stores  (operated  in  its  own  name)  and  will 
own  many  more  when  the  present  chances  of  litigation  are  re¬ 
moved.  • 

Machinery?  Largely  controlled  by  institutions  like  the 
American  Shoe  Manufacturing  Trust,  a  particularly  vicious  form 
of  these  combinations. 


Men’s  clothing?  Passing  into  the  “chain”  system.  One  com- 
pany  owns  thirty-seyen  clothing  stores  in  the  West;  another 
has  1 72  in  the  East. 

Banks?  Owned  or  controlled  chiefly  by  the  Standard  Oil, 
Morgan  or  Beef  Trust  “chains” 

Butcher  shops?  Under  process  of  absorption  through  the 
forth^Be^Trast340™8’  ^  beCOming  Practically  the  agencies 

Dry  goods  of  all  kinds,  stationery,  toys,  furniture,  carpets 
and  rugs  millinery,  hats,  drugs,  clothing,  notions,  cigars  and 
tobacco,  books,  periodicals,  trunks  and  travelers’  requisites,  den- 
t,st[y’  J lamps.>  Crockery,  glassware,  stoves,  men’s  furnishings, 
umbrellas,  piano  and  other  musical  instruments,  sheet  music 
pictures,  dressmaking,  harness,  shoes,  all  kinds  of  leather  goods! 
and  some  other  things  are  usually  included  in  the  department 
stores.  (From  “Business:  the  Heart  of  the  Nation,”  by  Charles 
Edward  Russell  ($1.00  net),  John  Lane  Company,  New  York 
Publishers.) 

(c)  CONCENTRATION  IN  AMERICAN  RAILWAYS. 

The  greatest  single  industrial  factor  in  the  United  States  is 
the  railways.  Railroading  is  the  biggest  business  in  the  country. 
Every  other  business  and  industry  depends  upon  the  railroads. 
They  are  the  framework  of  the  entire  economic  and  industrial 
system  of  the  nation— the  greatest  factor  in  modern  life. 

According  to  the  various  authorities  there  are  about  2,500 
different  roads.  They  do  an  aggregate  of  about  $2,800,000,000 
worth  of  business  a  year,  or  about  $9,000,000  per  day.  This  is 
nearly  five  times  as  much  as  the  Steel  'Trust  does,  nearly  six 
times  the  total  government  receipts.  In  a  year  it  is  more  than 
five  times  the  whole  world’s  output  of  gold  and  more  than  all 
the  money  in  the  United  States. 

Moreover,  the  concentration  of  the  ownership  of  the  railways 
constitutes  the  most  gigantic  trust  in  the  world.  For  while 
'  there  are  nominally  2,500  different  corporations,  the  interrela¬ 
tionship,  interlocking  directorates,  community  of  interests  and 
the  like  have  knit  the  whole  system  together  by  most  remark¬ 
able  and  intricate  ties  in  such  a  way  as  to  create  a  mammoth 
transportation  trust.  Its  power  and  domination  is  such  as  this 
nation  has  never  before  seen. 

Beginning  back  in  1828  with  three  miles  of  railroad,  the  sys¬ 
tem  has  grown  steadily  and  rapidly  until  today  there  are  over 
250,000  miles,  not  including  the  so-called  industrial  roads,  a 
term  applied  to  lumber  and  logging,  switching  and  terminal 
tracks. 

And  with  the  growth  of  mileage  the  revenues  and  expendi¬ 
tures  have  been  going  up.  These  are  shown  in  the  following 
tables.  The  figures  for  the  years  1905,  1906  and  1907  are  taken 
from  the  Statistics  of  Railways  in  the  U.  S.  Interstate  Com¬ 
merce  Commission  for  these  years.  The  figures  for  the  years 
3908  to  1911  are  from  the  Bulletins  of  Revenues  and  Expenses, 
monthly  report  section.  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  Nos. 
5,  18  and  31: 


Earnings. 

. $2,082,482,406 

2,325,765,167 
2,589,105,578 
Expenses. 
$1,687,144,975 
1,615,497,2*1 
1,847,189,77* 
1,935,511,581 


Expenses. 

$1,390,602,162 

1,536,877,271 

1,748,515,814 

Income. 

$656,418,320 

742,987,1*9 

8S8.61T.lt9 

776,232,865 


It  will  be  noted  that  the  income  is  not  the  difference  between 
the  two  columns.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Commission 
subtracts  from  the  income  certain  other  expenditures  and  the? 


/ 


119 

takes  out  the  taxes.  The  figures,  therefore,  represent  the  final 
net  operating  income  or  profit. 

The  figures  for  the  year  ending  June  30,  1912,  are  hot  yet 
available,  but  preliminary  figures  that  cannot  be  made  public  yet 
indicate  that  the  present  year  is  to  be  the  banner  year  of  all, 
surpassing  the  years  of  1907  and  1910. 

The  bad  features  of  this  gigantic  private  monopoly  will  be 
treated  in  the  chapter  under  Evil  Effects  of  the  Capitalistic 
System. 

(d)  CONCENTRATION  IN  THE  OWNERSHIP  OF 
TELEGRAPHS. 

(From  an  article  by  Charles  Edward  Russell  in  Pearson’s 

Magazine.) 

The  Western  Union  Telegraph  Company  was  organized  in 
1856  with  a  capital  of  $500,000  to  take  over  the  old  New  York  & 
Mississippi  Valley.  Whenever  a  company  is  organized  to  “take 
over”  another  company,  look  out  for  financial  high  tides. 

By  May,  1864,  stock  dividends,  melons,  water  and  other  forms 
of  financing  legerdemain  had  increased  the  capital  stock  to  $20,- 
133,800.  By  July  1,  1869,  it  was  $41,963,100.  For  all  of  which  we 
are  now  paying  with  the  tolls  on  our  telegrams. 

In  June,  1879,  the  Western  Union  cut  another  melon,  this  time 
of  $5,978,125,  being  a  scrip  dividend  of  17  per  cent.  We  are  still 
paying  for  that  also. 

In  those  days  a  recognized  branch  of  trade  in  Wall  Street 
was  to  organize  a  telegraph  company,  make  a  pretense  of  com¬ 
peting  with  the  Western  Union  and  sell  out  to  the  monopoly, 
thereby  loading  it  up  with  further  capitalization  for  us  to  pay.  I 
will  give  one  example,  and  that  historic. 

About  1878  Jay  Gould  got  up  one  of  these  specious  companies 
called  the  American  Union.  It  was  launched  as  the  champion 
of  an  oppressed  people,  going  forth  to  war  with  the  hateful 
monopoly  and  scattering  on  all  sides  the  blessings  of  competi¬ 
tion. 

Mr.  Gould  maneuvered  this  bright  and  brilliant  concern  until 
he  got  the  Western  Union  where  he  wanted  it,  then  he  held  up 
the  old  ship  with  a  proposal  of  a  grand  consolidation  of  the 
American  Union,  Western  Union  and  Atlantic  &  Pacific  com¬ 
panies  on  this  delectable  basis.  The  Western  Union  was  to 
increase  its  capital  stock  to  $80,000,000  by  issuing  about  $35,000,- 
000  of  new  shares.  Of  these  Mr.  Gould  took:  100,000  shares  in 
payment  at  par  for  his  American  Union  stock  and  similarly  ex¬ 
changed  $5,000,000  of  American  Union  bonds.  These  transac¬ 
tions  were  at  par,  please  note;  but  the  stockholders  of  the  At¬ 
lantic  &  Pacific,  the  older  and  better  company,  were  obliged 
to  take  the  new  stock  at  60  for  their  $14,000,000  of  Atlantic  & 
Pacific.  They  couldn’t  do  anything  else;  the  pistol  was  at  their 
heads.  The  rest  of  the  new  issue  went  to  the  holders  of  old 
Western  Union. 

This  performance  gave  Mr.  Gould  control  of  the  Western 
Union  and  added  $35,000,000  to  the  capitalization  on  which  we 
must  furnish  the  dividends  through  excessive  telegraph  tolls. 

Most  of  these  securities  had  been  created  with  nothing  but 
a  printing  press.  But  we  ought  to  think  of  them  tenderly.  They 
have  been  indeed  dear  to  us,  for  we  have  paid  f©r  them  about 
twice  their  face  value  so  far. 

After  the  consolidation  experts  gave  their  opinion  that  every¬ 
thing  the  Western  Union  had  on  earth  could  be  duplicated  for 
$20,000,000.  Capital  stock  $80,000,000.  Four  to  one. 

That  is  the  difference  between  telegraph  rates  here  and  tele¬ 
graph  rates  in  Germany.  Four  to  one. 


120 


(e)  CONCENTRATION  IN  OWNERSHIP  OF  TELE¬ 
PHONES. 

From  1902  to  1907  the  Independent  (no'h-Bell)  System  in¬ 
creased  24  per  cent.  The  Bell  System  increased  297.7  per  cent 
(American  Ye\r  Book,  page  21.) 

In  1907  the  number  of  companies  grouped  in  the  Bell  System 
was  175,  and  the  number  of  independent  (non-Bell)  systems 
was  3,441.  Yet  the  Bell  System  had  a  capital  of  $749,840,435, 
while  the  non-Bell  systems  had  a  capital  of  only  $322,965,- 
558.  One  hundred  seventy-five  companies  had  twice  as  much 
capital  as  3,441  companies.  (Special  Census  Report  “Tele¬ 
phones”  (1907),  page  57.) 

4.  The  Money  Trust. 

(From  report  of  the  committee  appointed  pursuant  to  House 
Resolutions  429  and  504  to  investigate  the  concentration 
of  control  of  money  and  credit.  Submitted  by 

Mr.  Pujo.  Pages  130,  131,  132,  133.) 

If  by  a  money  trust  is  meant— 

An  established  and  well-defined  identity  and  community  of 
interest  between  a  few  leaders  of  finance  which  has  been  created 
and  is  held  together  through  stock  holdings,  interlocking  direc¬ 
torates  and  other  forms  of  domination  over  banks,  trust  com¬ 
panies,  railrpads,  public  service  and  industrial  corporations,  and 
which  has  resulted  in  a  vast  and  growing  concentration  of  con¬ 
trol  of  money  and  credit  in  the  hands  of  a  comparatively  few 
men— your  committee,  as  before  stated,  has  no  hesitation  in 
asserting  as  the  result  of  its  investigation  up  to  this  time  that 
the  condition  thus  described  exists  in  this  country  today. 

Some  of  the  endless  ramifications  of  this  power  have  been 
traced  and  presented  and  it  is  upon  these  that  we  have  based 
our  findings.  Many  others  can  be  fully  discovered  and  analyzed 
only  after  a  close  scrutiny  of  the  internal  affairs  of  the  great 
national  banks  that  will  disclose  the  ways  in  which  their  re¬ 
sources  are  used,  to  whom  their  funds  are  loaned,  what  securities 
they  have  been  buying  and  selling  and  how  their  vast  profits 
have  been  earned.  Whilst  your  committee  has  been  denied  ac¬ 
cess  to  this  data,  sufficient  has  been  learned  to  reveal  the  rela¬ 
tions  of  these  banks  and  of  the  State  banks  and  trust  companies 
and  the  use  that  has  been  made  of  them  in  upbuilding  a  power 
over  our  financial  system  and  in  consequence  over  our  railroads 
and  greater  industries  that  permits  real  competition  on  a  large 
•  scale  in  the  various  fields  of  enterprise  only  by  sufferance,  if  at 
all. 

The  parties  to  this  combination  or  understanding  or  com¬ 
munity  of  interest,  by  whatever  name  it  may  be  called,  may  be 
conveniently  classified,  for  the  purpose  of  differentiation,  into 
four  separate  groups. 

First.  The  first,  which  for  convenience  of  statement  we  will 
call  the  inner  group,  consists  of  J.  P.  Morgan  &  Co.,  the  recog¬ 
nized  leaders,  and  George  F.  Baker  and  James  Stillman  in  their 
individual  capacities  and  in  their  joint  administration  and  con¬ 
trol  of  the  First  National  Bank,  the  National  City  Bank,  the  Na¬ 
tional  Bank  of  Commerce,  the  Chase  National  Bank,  the  Guar¬ 
anty  Trust  Co.,  and  the  Bankers  Trust  Co.,  with  total  known 
resources,  in  these  corporations  alone,  in  excess  of  $1,300,000,000, 
and  of  a  number  of  smaller  but  important  financial  institutions. 
This  takes  ncf  account  of  the  personal  fortunes  of  these  gentle¬ 
men. 

Second.  Closely  allied  with  this  inner  or  primary  group,  and 
indeed  related  to  them  practically  as  partners  in  many  of  their 
larger  financial  enterprises,  are  the  powerful  international  bank¬ 
ing  house  of  Lee,  Higginson  &  Co.,  the  Kidder,  Peabody  &  Co., 


321 

with  three  affiliated  banks  in  Boston— the  National  Shawmut 
Bank,  the  First  National  Bank,  and  the  Old  Colony  Trust  Co.— 
having  at  least  more  than  half  of  the  total  resources  of  all  the 
Boston  banks;  also  with  interests  and  representation  in  other 
important  New  England  financial  institutions. 

Third  In  New  York  City  the  international  banking  house  of 
Messrs.  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Co.,  with  its  large  foreign  clientele  and 
connections,  whilst  only  qualifiedly  allied  with  the  inner  group, 
and  only  in  isolated  transactions,  yet  through  its  close  rela¬ 
tions  with  the  National  City  Bank  and  the  National  Bank  of 
Commerce  and  other  financial  institutions  with  which  it  has 
recently  allied  itself  has  many  interests  in  common,  conducting 
large  joint-account  transactions  with  them,  especially  in  recent 
years,  and  having  what  virtually  amounts  to  an  understanding 
not  to„  compete,  which  is  defended  as  a  principle  of  “banking 
ethics.  Together  they  have,  with  a  few  exceptions,  preempted 
the  banking  business  of  the  important  railways  of  the  country. 

Fourth.  In  Chicago  this  inner  group  associates  with  and 
makes  issues  of  securities  in  joint  account  or  through  under¬ 
writing  participations  primarily  with  the  First'  National  Bank 
and  the  Illinois  Trust  &  Savings  Bank,  and  has  more  or  less 
friendly  business  relations  with  the  Continental  &  Commercial 
National  Bank,  which  participates  at  times  in  the  underwriting 
of  security  issues  by  the  inner  group.  These  are  the  three  largest 
financial  institutions  in  Chicago,  with  combined  resources  (in¬ 
cluding  the  two  affiliated  and  controlled  State  institutions  of 
the  two  national  banks)  of  $561,000,000. 

Radiating  from  these  principal  groups  and  closely  affiliated 
with  them  are  smaller  but  important  banking  houses,  such  as 
Kissel  Kinnicut  &  Co.,  White,  Weld  &  Co.,  and  Harvey  Fisk  & 
Sons,  who  receive  large  and  lucrative  patronage  from  the  dom¬ 
inating  groups  and  are  used  by  the  latter  as  jobbers  or  dis¬ 
tributors  of  securities,  the  issuing  of  which  they  control,  but 
which,  for  reasons  of  their  own,  they  prefer  not  to  have  issued 
or  distributed  under  their  own  names.  Messrs.  Lee,  Higginson 
&  Co.,  besides  being  partners  with  the  inner  group,  are  also  fre¬ 
quently  utilized  in  this  service  because  of  their  facilities  as 
distributors  of  securities. 

Beyond  these  inner  groups  and  sub-groups  are  banks  and 
bankers  throughout  the  country  who  co-operate  with  them  in 
underwriting  or  guaranteeing  the  sale  of  securities  offered  to 
the  public  and  who  also  act  as  distributors  of  such  securities.  It 
was  impossible  to  learn  the  identity  of  these  corporations,  owing 
to  the  unwillingness  of  the  members  of  the  inner  group  to 
disclose  the  names  of  their  underwriters,  but  sufficient  appears 
to  jusBfy  the  statement  that  there  are  at  least  hundreds  of  them 
and  that  they  extend  into  many  of  the  cities  throughout  this  and 
foreign  countries. 

The  patronage  thus  proceeding  from  the  inner  group  and  its 
sub-groups  is  of  great  value  to  these  banks  and  bankers,  who 
are  thus  tied  by  self-interest  to  the  great  issuing  houses  and 
may  be  regarded  as  a  part  of  this  vast  financial  organization. 
Buch  patronage  yields  no  inconsiderable  part  of  the  income  of 
these  banks  and  bankers  and  without  much  risk  on  account  of 
the  facilities  of  the  principal  groups  for  placing  issues  of  securi¬ 
ties  through  their  domination  of  great  banks  and  trust  com¬ 
panies  and  their  other  domestic  affiliations  and  their  foreign 
connection.  The  underwriting  commissions  on  issues  made  by 
this  inner  group  are  usually  easily  earned  and  do  not  ordinarily 
involve  the  underwriters  in  the  purchase  of  the  underwritten 
securities.  Their  interest  in  the  transaction  is  generally  ad¬ 
justed,  unless  they  choose  to  purchase  part  of  the  securities,  by 
the  payment  to  them  of  a  commission.  There  are,  however 
occasions  on  which  this  is  not  the  case.  The  underwriters  are 


122 


then  required  to  take  the  securities.  Bankers  and  brokers  are 
so  anxious  to  be  permitted  to  participate  in  these  transactions 
under  the  lead  of  the  inner  group  that  as  a  rule  they  join  when 
invited  to  do  so,  regardless  of  their  approval  of  the  particular 
business,  lest  by  refusing  they  should  thereafter  cease  to  be 
invited. 

It  can  hardly  be  expected  that  the  banks,  trust  companies 
and  other  institutions  that  are  thus  seeking  participations  from 
this  inner  group  would  be  likely  to  engage  in  business  of  a 
character  that  would  be  displeasing  to  the  latter  or  that  would 
interfere  with  their  plans  or  prestige.  And  so  the  protection 
that  can  be  offered  by  the  member  of  this  inner  group  consti¬ 
tutes  the  safest  refuge  of  our  great  industrial  combinations  and 
railroad  systems  against  future  competition.  The  powerful  grip 
of  these  gentlemen  is  upon.the  throttle  that  controls  the  wheels 
of  credit  and  upon  their  signal  those  wheels  will  turn  or  stop. 

In  the  case  of  the  pending  New  York  subway  financing  of 
$170,000,000  of  bonds  by  Messrs.  Morgan  &  Co.  and  their  asso¬ 
ciates,  Mr.  Davison  estimated  that  there  were  from  100  to  125 
such  underwriters  who  were  apparently  glad  to  agree  that 
Messrs.  Morgan  &  Co.,  the  First  National  Bank,  and  the  Na¬ 
tional  City  Bank  should  receive  3  per  cent — equal  to  $5,100,000 — 
for  forming  this  syndicate,  thus  relieving  themselves  from  all 
liability,  whilst  the  underwriters  assumed  the  risk  of  what  the 
bonds  would  realize  and  of  being  required  to  take  their  share  of 
the  unsold  portion. 

This  transaction  furnishes  a  fair  illustration  of  the  basis  on 
which  this  inner  group  is  able  to  capitalize  its  financial  power. 
Included  among  the  underwriters  are  the  banks  and  trust  com¬ 
panies  that  are  controlled  by  Messrs.  Morgan,  Baker,  and  Still¬ 
man  under  voting  trusts,  through  stock  ownerships,  and  in  the 
other  ways  described.  Thus  they  utilize  this  control  for  their 
own  profit  and  that  of  the  stockholders  of  the  institutions.  But 
the  advantage  to  the  depositors  whose  money,  and  credit  may  be 
used  in  financing  such  enterprises  is  not  apparent. 

It  may  be  that  this  recently  concentrated  money  power  so 
far  has  not  been  abused  otherwise  than  in  the  possible  exaction 
of  excessive  profits  through  absence  of  competition.  Whilst  no 
evidence  of  abuse  has  come  to  the  attention  of  the  committee 
from  impartial  sources,  neither  has  there  been  adequate  proof 
or  opportunity  for  proof  on  the  subject.  Here  again  the  data 
has  not  been  available. 

Sufficient  has,  however,  been  developed  to  demonstrate  that 
neither  potentially  competing  banking  institutions  or  competing 
railroad  or  industrial  corporations  should  be  subject  to  a  com¬ 
mon  source  of  private  control. 

Your  committee  is  convinced  that  however  well  founded  may 
be  the  insurances  of  good  intentions  by  those  now  holding  the 
places  of  power  which  have  been  thus  created,  the  situation  is 
fraught  with  too  great  peril  to  our  institutions  to  be  tolerated. 

Factor  of  Increasing  Concentration  Admitted. 

The  resources  of  the  banks  and  trust  companies  of  the  city 
of  New  York  in  1911  were  $5,121,245,175,  which  is  21.73  per  cent 
of  the  total  banking  resources  of  the  country  as  reported  to  the 
Comptroller  of  the  Currency.  This  takes  no  account  of  the 
unknown  resources  of  the  great  private  banking  houses  whose 
affiliations  to  the  New  York  financial  institutions  we  are  about 
to  discuss. 

That  in  recent  years  concentration  of  control  of  the  banking 
resources  and  consequently  of  credit  by  the  group  to  which  we 
will  refer  has  grown  apace  in  the  city  of  New  York,  is  defended 
by  some  witnesses  and  regretted  by  others,  but  acknowledged 
by  all  to  be  a  fact. 


123 


As  appears  from  statistics  compiled  by  accountants  for  the 
committee,  in  1911,  of  the  total  resources  of  the  banks  and  trust 
companies  m  New  York  City,  the  20  largest  held  42.97  per  cent; 
’n  19°6>  the  20  largest  held  38.24  per  cent  of  the  total;  in  190L 
34.97  per  cent. 


Process  of  Concentration. 


This  increased  concentration  of  control  of  money  and  credit 
has  been  effected  principally  as  follows: 

First,  through  consolidations  of  competitive  or  potentially 
competitive  banks  and  trust  companies,  which  consolidations  in 
turn  have  recently  been  brought  under  sympathetic  manage¬ 
ment. 


Second,  through  the  same  powerful  interests  becoming  large 
stockholders  in  potentially  competitive  banks  and  trust  com¬ 
panies.  This  is  the  simplest  way  of  acquiring  control,  but  since 
it  requires  the  largest  investment  of  capital,  it  is  the  least  used, 
although  the  recent  investments  in  that  direction  for  that  ap¬ 
parent  purpose  amount  to  tens  of  millions  of  dollars  in  present 
market  values. 

Third,  through  the  confederation  of  potentially  competitive 
banks  and  trust  companies  by  means  of  the  system  of  interlock¬ 
ing  directorates. 

Fourth,  through  the  influence  which  the  more  powerful 
banking  houses,  banks  and  trust  companies  have  secured  in  the 
management  of  insurance  companies,  railroads,  producing  and 
trading  corporations,  and  public  utility  corporations,  by  means 
of  stockholdings,  voting  trusts,  fiscal  agency  contracts,  or  repre¬ 
sentation  upon  their  boards  of  directors,  or  through  supplying 
the  money  requirements  of  railway,  industrial  and  public  utilities 
corporations  and  thereby  being  enabled  to  participate  in  the  de¬ 
termination  of  their  financial  and  business  policies. 

Fifth,  through  partnership  or  joint  account  arrangements  be¬ 
tween  a  few  of  the  leading  banking  houses,  banks  and  trust  com¬ 
panies  in  the  purchase  of  security  issues  of  the  great  interstate 
corporations,  accompanied  by  understandings  of  recent  growth — 
*  sometimes  called  “banking  ethics” — which  have  had  the  effect  of 
effectually  destroying  competition  between  such  banking  houses, 
banks  and  trust  companies  in  the  struggle  for  business  or  in  the 
purchase  and  sqle  of  large  issues  of  such  securities. 

Agents  of  Concentration. 

It  is  a  fair  deduction  from  the  testimony  that  the  most 
active  agents  in  forwarding  and  bringing  about  the  concentra¬ 
tion  of  control  of  money  and  credit  through  one  or  another  of 
the  processes  above  described  have  been  and  are — 

J.  P.  Morgan  &  Co. 

First  National  Bank  of  New  York. 

National  City  Bank  of  New  York.' 

Lee,  Higginson  &  Co.,  of  Boston  and  New  York. 

Kidder,  Peabody  &  Co.,  of  Boston  and  New  York 
.  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Co. 

Estimated  Resources  of  Morgan  &  Co. 


(From  Report  of  the  Pujo  Committee,  pages  86-87..) 

The  resources  of  Morgan  &  Co.  are  unknown;  its  deposits 
are  $163,000,000.  The  resources  of  the  First  National  Bank  are 
$150,000,000  and  those  of  its  appendage,  the  First  Security  Com¬ 
pany,  at  a  very  low  estimate,  $35,000,000.  The  resources  of  the 
National  City  Bank  are  $274,000,000;  those  of  its  appendage,  the 
National  City  Company,  are  unknown,  though  the  capital  of 
the  latter  is  alone  $10,000,000.  Thus,  leaving  out  of  account  the 
very  considerable  part  which  is  unknown,  the  institutions  com- 


124 

posing  this  group  have  resources  of  upward  of  $632,000,000, 
aside  from  the  ‘vast  individual  resources  of  Messrs.  Morgan, 
Baker  and  Stillman. 

Further,  as  heretofore  shown,  the  members  of  this  group, 
through  stock  holdings,  voting  trusts,  interlocking  directorates, 
and  other  relations*,  have  become  in  some  cases  the  absolutely 
dominant  factor,  in  others  the  most  important  single  factor,  in 
the  ^control  of  the  following  banks  and  trusts  companies  in  the 


city  of  New  York: 

(a)  Bankers  Trust  Co.,  resources . $  205,000,000 

(b)  Guaranty  Trust  Co.,  resources .  232,000,000 

(c)  Astor  Trust  Co.,  resources .  27,000,000 

(d)  National  Bank  of  Commerce,  resources .  190,000,000 

(e)  Liberty  National  Bank,  resources .  29,000,000 

(f)  Chase  National  Bank,  resources .  150,000,000 

(g-)  Farmers  Loan  &  Trust  Co.,  resources .  135,000,000 


In  all  7,  with  total  resources  of . $  968,000,000 

which,  added  to  the  known  resources  of  the  group 

themselves  makes  . . . $1,600,000,000 

as  the  aggregate  of  known  banking  resources  in  the 


city  of  New  York  under  their  control  or  influence. 

If  there  be  added  also  the  resources  of  the  Equit¬ 
able  Life.  Assurance  Society  controlled  through  the 
stock  ownership  of  J.  P.  Morgan .  504,000,000 


the  amount  becomes  . $2,104,000,000 

NOTE:  The  Comptroller  of  the  Currency,  in  his  reporltfor 
1908,  placed  the  total  banking  power  of  the  United  States  at 
$17,642,000,000. 


5.  Is  There  a  Retailers’  Trust? 

(From  “Wages  and  Prices  of  Commodities,”  Vol.  I,  Report  of 
Committee  and  Views  of  Minority,  Senate  Document 
No.  847,  page  119.) 

Retailers’  associations  exist  in  practically  all  localities,  and 
while  they  do  not  appear  to  be  organized  for  'the  purpose  of 
controlling  prices,  they  undoubtedly  do  exert  some  influence  in 
maintaining  prices  by  making  it  impossible  in  many  cases  for 
the  consumer  to  buy  direct  from  wholesalers  and  also  'by  ena¬ 
bling  the  trade  to  act  as  a  unit  in  matters  affecting  retailers,  and 
also  by  removing,  to  a  considerable  extent,  competition. 

The  effect  of  all  such  organizations  as  the  Elgin  Board  of 
Trade  is  to  advance  prices.  The  Elgin  board  practically  con¬ 
trols  the  price  of  fancy  Elgin  butter  produced  throughout  the 
Elgin  butter  district,  which  includes  northern  Illinois,  southern 
Wisconsin  and  eastern  Iowa.  The  board  does  not  control  the 
maximum  price,  but  does  establish  the  minimum  price.  The 
board  consists  of  somewhat  less  than  300  members,  and  more 
than  one-third  of  the  number  live,  in  Chicago,  and  included  in 
the  number  are  two  of  the  largest  Chicago  packing  houses. 

On  Monday  of  each  week  a  committee,  consisting  of  five 
members  of  the  board,  and  known  as  the  “quotation  committee,” 
fixes  the  price  at  which  settlement  shall  be  made  for  all  butter 
produced  during  the  preceding  week.  The  sales  on  the  board 
of  any  butter  before  the  meeting  of  the  quotation  committee 
may  or  may  not  be  taken  into  consideration  in  arriving  at  a 
price. 

Further  Evidence  of  a  Retailers’  Trust. 

(From  “Concentration  and  Control,”  by  Charles  R.  Van  Mise, 
pages  81,  82  and  83.  Published  by  The  Macmillan  Co.) 

The  retailers  in  a  given  city  or  community  have  .an  associa¬ 
tion  either  formal  or  informal,  and  there  is  among  the  members 
a  definite  understanding  that  prices  shall  be  maintained.  It 
makes  no  difference  from  what  dealer  one  buys  anthracite,  or 
sugar,  or  bacon,  or  flour,  or  any  other  standard  article,  in  the 
majority  of  the  small  towns  and  cities  of  the  country,  the  price 
asked  by  each  is  the  same,  with  possible  slight  variations  in  some 
cases.  It  may  be  that  for  a  time  a  retailer  will  cut  the  price 
on  some  standard  article  in  order  to  increase  his  trade,  in  which 


125 

case  there  is  likely  to  be  a  cut  by  some  other  retailer  on  another 
standard  line  in  order  to  equalize  this  advantage.  But  soon 
they  get  together  and  prices  are  again  the  same. 

For  some  concerns  which  have  a  large  part  of  the  ibusiness 
of  a  town  either  through  a  single  retail  shop  or  a  number  of 
them,  an  additional  shop  may  be  there  established  iby  this  firm 
under  another  name,  apparently  in  complete  independence,  in 
order  that  there  may  be  an  appearance  of  competition.  From 
time  to  time,  if  there  be  danger  of  outside  parties  entering  the 
held,  the  stool  pigeon  establishment  may  reduce  prices  under 
the  direction  of  the  controlling  organization. 

The  extent  to  which  there  is  combination  among  the  re¬ 
tailers  has  led  Professor  Laughlin  of  the  University  of  Chicago 
before  the  Senate  Interstate  Commerce  Committee,  to  testify 
that  competition  among  retailers  has  completely  broken  down. 
Says  he:  ‘We  do  not  have  competition;  it  does  not  exist. 
Today  there  is  really  no  competition  between  the  retail  men 
who  sell  meat  or  groceries  to  different  classes  of  people.” 

I  While  the  statement  is  substantially  true  for  most  communi¬ 
ties,  it  does  not  fully  express  the  facts  for  all  of  them.  There 
still  exists  competition  in  prices  between  the  small  shops  and 
the  great  mail  order  houses.  Indeed,  this  competition  is  so 
severe  that%  it  is  feared  by  the  ordinary  retailers,  who  oppose 
vigorously  a  parcels  post  because  they  believe  that  this  would 
make  the  mail  order  houses  even  more  formidable  competitors. 
Also  there  is  competition  between  the  .small  retailers  and  the 
great  department  stores;  and  since  the  latter  have  begun  to 
introduce  branch  houses  in  this  country  as  has  been  done 
extensively  in  England,  the  competition  is  likely  to  become 
more  serious.  Further,  there  is  competition  between  the  reg- 
ular  retailers  and  the  co-operative  stores;  but  in  this  country 
the  latter  are  relatively  few  in  number,  although  numerous  in 
England. 

A  statement  nearer  the  truth  about  the  retail  trade  would  be 
that  competition  in  price  for  standard  articles  has  ceased  to 
exist  between  shops  of  the  same  class  in  the  same  community. 
The  regular  retailers’  prices  for  a  town  are  the  same;  the  prices 
for  the  department  stores  are  the  same;  the  prices  of  the  mail 
order  houses  are  the  same. 

f,  Jh"  following  figures  in  the  main  bear  out  the  contention 
that  there  is  a  Retailers  Trust.”  From  1894  to  1900  prices 
decreased.  The  decrease,  however,  was  considerably  greater  in 
wholesale  than  in  retail  prices.  It  is  especially  noteworthy 
that  since  1905  when  the  retailers’  combinations  seem  to  have 
become  firmly  established,  the  increase  in  retail  prices  has  been 
considerably  greater  every  year  than  the  increase  in  wholesale 
prices. 

(F.r°m,Stafstica‘  Abstract  of  the  United  States,  1911.  Relative 
Wholesale  and  Retail  Prices  of  Food,  1890-1907  nae;e  559  ) 

ol  o  tlirn  D  _  _  >  Ir  O  •/ 


,.  ,  Relative 

calendar  wholesale 


Relative 

retail 


-  —  —  uuiuoaic  i  Lilli 

lear.  prices  of  prices  of 


food. 

■890 .  112.4 

■891 .  115.7 

■892 .  103.6 

893 .  110.2 

•894 .  99.8 

l|95 .  94.6 

■896 .  83.8 

897  .  87.7 

898  .  94.4 


food. 

102.1 

103.4 

101.8 

104.1 

100.3 

98.2 
95.8 

96.3 
98.5 


_.  .  ,  Relative  Relative 

Calendar  wholesale  retail 
Year.  prices  of  prices  of 
food.  food. 

1899  .  98.3  99.6 

1900  .  104.2  101.5 

1901  .  105.9  105.5 

1902  .  1U.3  no.9 

1903  .  107.1  110.9 

.  107.2  111.6 

1905  .  108.7  112.5 

1906  .  U2.6  116.2 

1907  .  117.8  120.7 


/tt  c  t-n  u  .  117.8 

(firom  Senate  Document  No.  847,  Vol.  I,  page  40) 

The  retail  advance  has  exceeded  the  wholesale  advance  foi 
jrat.cally  all  varieties  of  meats.  Coffee,  rice,  sugar  and  bean: 
t  wiT  •*  wholesale  and  advanced  at  retail.  Sugar  declinec 
•t  both  wholesale  and  retail,  but  the  decline  was  much  les; 
it  retail.  » 


126 


Retail  and  wholesale  prices  tor  the  spring  of  1910  as  com¬ 
pared  with  the  spring  of  1900  are  available  for  a  few  articles. 


Bacon — 

Wholesale  . 

Retail  . . 

Flour,  Wheat — 

Wholesale  . 

Retail  . 

Flour,  Rye — 

Wholesale  . 

Retail  . 

Butter,  Creamery — 

Wholesale  . 

Retail  . » . . . . 

Sugar,  Granulated — 

Wholesale  . . 

Retail  . 

Molasses,  New  Orleans — 

Wholesale  . 

Retail  . 

Corn  Meal — 1 

Wholesale  . 

Retail  . 

Rice — 

Wholesale  . 

Retail  . 

Eggs,  Strictly  Freph — 

Wholesale  . 

Retail  . . 

Lard — 

Wholesale  . 

Retail  . 

Cheese — 

Wholesale  . 

Retail  . 


Per  cent 
advance. 
.  .  128.9 
.  .  73.* 

. .  61.4 

.  .  62.5 

.  .  25.5 

.  .  37.6 

.  .  29.4 

.  .  46.4 

..  4.5 

.  .  11.6 

25.3 

.  .  20.6 

.  .  78.2 

..  56.3 

1.1 

.  .  25.0 

.  .  61.8 
.  .  133.3 

.  .  126.2  ■ 
..  109.1 

.  .  31.4 

.  .  25.0 


The  retail  price  advanced  less  than  the  wholesale  for  bacon, 
wheat,  flour,  molasses,  corn  meal,  lard  and  cheese.  The  retail 
price  advanced  more  than  the  wholesale  for  butter,  sugar,  eggs 
rye  flour  and  rice.  Remarkable  advances  in  price  are  shown  foi 
bacon,  eggs,  corn  meal  and  lard. 


6.  The  Effects  of  Concentration. 

(a)  JUGGLING  WITH  PRICES. 

(From  the  Chicago  Tribune,  September  9,  1913.) 

During  the  month  of  August  the  price  of  butter  went  up  4  tc 
Al/2  cents  a  pound.  The  protesting  housewife  was  told  that  th« 
raise  in  price  was  due  to  a  scarcity  of  butter.  A  scarcity  there 
was,  but  it  was  artificially  created. 

What  caused  the  scarcity  of  butter  was  this:  6,460,000  pound? 
of  butter  were  withdrawn  from  the  market  during  the  month  o 
August  and  were  stored  away  in  42  cold  storage  houses  at  the 
principal  marketing  points.  On  August  1st,  43  of  the  principa 
cold  storage  houses  in  the  country  reported  having  65,541,00( 
pounds  of  butter.  On  September  1st,  42  cold  storage  plant: 
showed  up  with  72,001,000  pounds.  The  difference,  6,460,00! 
pounds,  was  added  to  these  cold  storage  houses  during  the 
month  of  August — at  the  time  when  the  housewife  was  told  o 
a  butter  shortage  and  was  made  to  pay  an  extra  4 ]/2  cents  oi 
every  pound.  The  42  cold  storage  houses  supplying  thesi 
figures  are  not,  of  course,  the  only  ones  that  have  added  to  thei 
storage  supply  of  butter  during  August.  They  are  merely  th< 
ones  who  have  reported  having  done  so.  There  must  have  beei 
many  other  plants,  smaller  ones,  doing  the  same  thing  who  hav< 
not  reported  their  operations. 

The  raise  in  the  price  of  butter  during  the  month  of  Augus 
was  therefore  purely  artificial.  It  was  not  a  case  of  supply  am 
demand  regulating  prices.  There  was  no  economic  reason  o* 
law  forcing  butter  up.  It  was  forced  up  by  speculators.  Here 
then,  is  one  explanation  for  the  high  cost  of  living — arbitrary 
price-fixing  for  private  greed.  The  government  would  do  we. 
to  look  into  the  methods  of  the  cold  storage  houses  and  see  i 
these  citadels  of  speculation  could  not  be  thawed  into  relief  foj 
the  outraged  consumer. 


127 


Prices  Held  Up. 

(From  the  Chicago  Tribune.) 

On  June  10,  1913,  there  were  shipped  into  Chicago  several 
carloads  of  potatoes.  The  market  was  already  supplied  and  the 
dealers  were  desirous  of  keeping  up  the  price  to  20  .cents.  The 
potatoes  just  shipped  were  supposed  to  be  wholesaled  for  20 
cents  a  (bushel.  Rather  than  have  the  price  disturbed,  these 
many  carloads  of  potatoes  were  dumped  onto  the  tracks  a  few 
miles  south  of  'Chicago. 

Chicago  citizens  continued  to  pay  20  cents. 

It  is  claimed  that  there  are  now  1,000,000,0*00  eggs  in  storage 
—and  prices  are  still  soaring.— Charles  Edward  Russell  in 
Pearsons  Magazine,  October,  1913. 

(b)  TRUST  PRICES  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD. 
(From  Senate  Document  No.  54,  Sixty-first  Congress,  First 
Session.) 

TABLE  II.— Showing  difference  between  export  and  home  price. 
rrn,  of  certain  specified  articles. 

[The  prices  are  of  date  between  January  l  and  May  15  1909 

Tariff'  Hei?in«Se»0  f £e3  °V-h£  l\fms  taken  from^he  piyne 
•  e*ri?ss'  a  few  of  which  items  are  of  1908.  Every 
price  is  of  the  same  date  as  the  other  of  the  pair  export  or 
domestic,  in  comparison  with  it.]  ’  e  port  or 

Articles  and  description.  pSce^pHc?6  Differ" 

A.uger  bits:  Irwin’s  solid  center,  4-16 . 

Bird  cages,  Hendryx’V  No.'  * 3i6 ill.*!  .'pl£  doz.‘ .' $13'oO 

Bolts;  Carriage,  %  by  6  inches . per  loo!!  60 

^offee  mills,  Enterprise,  No.  1 .  each  122 

Egg  beaters,  A.  &  J.  Mfg.  Co.’s.’.*.*.'. per  gross’ ’  12  16 
ce  picks,  Walker’s  No.  104 . . . . ??£e? dol*  ’  98 

ce  shaves,  Walker’s  No.  52 . ...  per  dlz** 

Nai??  chimneys:  Macbeth’s  No.  502.. per  doz! 

Cut . per  cwt . 


ence. 
pr.  ct. 


12.57 

.40 


Wire 


Piumbs  and  levels,  DisstoA* No*.’  12 ! !  .'Pper  dJz!  *. 
Rifle?1  km^e  and  tool  kit,  Ulery’s..per  set.. 

Stevens’  “Little  Scout,”  No.  14. 

Stevens’  “Maynard  Jr.,”  No.  14 
saws: 

Disston’s  butcher,  24-inch,  No.  7.. per  doz 

*  Disston’s  framed  wood,  No.  60 _ per  doz 

screw-drivers,  Disston’s  elect.,  12-in.. per  doz*’ 
shoe  dressing:  v 

Whittemore’s  “Gilt  Edge” . per  doz.. 

“Baby  Elite” . per  doz 


each. . 
each . . 


Whittemore’s 
shotguns: 

Stevens’  No.  107 .  ~af.h 

Stevens’  No.  225 .  . %% ££’ * 

Steel  rails:  eacn.. 

Bessemer  standard . per  ton 

Open  hearth  standard . per  ton 

Sugar,  refined  .  per  DOund  ' 

Va tch •« . D 1 8 s  1 0 n’ 8  brick,  8-in.,  No.  l..per  doz.’! 
Elrln  movement,  20-year  gold-filled 

C&S6  . . . .  C3,ch 

Elgin  movement,  silveroid  case! .’ .’  .‘each 
Vheels,  carriage: 


1.85 

1.90 

6.82 

1.15 

1.35 
1.80 

8.50 

6.00 

1.36 

1.20 

.60 

3.00 

8.67 

25.85 

28.60 

.026 

4.07 


7.98 

3.04 


$  1.80  39 

18.20  40 

.75  25 

1.35  11 

2.65  18 

17.64  45 

1.50  53 

15.00  19 

.68  70 

1.98  7 

2.13  12 

10.08  72 

1.50  30 

1.75  30 

2.20  22 

11.90  40 

9.00  50 

1.86  37 

1.75  46 

.67  12 

4.50  50 

9.75  12 

28.00  8 
31.85  11 

.0455  75 
6.00  47 


10.23 

4.47 


Plain  grade  “A 


per  set  of  4..  8.00  11.25  41 


o_  °  ~  . . per  set  or  4..  8.UU 

barvln  patent,  grade  “A” .  . .  .per  set  of  4 .  2100  30  nn  4.3 

^u*h^«reP°yrt+  by.  „ Tariff  Reform  Committee,  October  1904  ) 
^ned  ’g?odnst:erS'  A  QUality’  N°*  2'0- -*<>*  •*  3.20  3  LOO  25  } 

'h*ir.e*«Bal,tlin0re  beans*  No*  •  •  •  -Per  doz.  .  .85 

maple,  cane  seat,  No.  2584.. per  doz..  13.00 

i°c.ks’  8;day  Akron  or  Aldrich . ...each..  150 

^ondensed  milk,  Eagle  brand .  5  50 

-utlery.  table  knives  and  3 -prong  forks, 

bandies.  No.  632,  pairs.... per  gross.. 

ountain  pens,  No.  12,  plain . feach 

larness,  one  horse:  eacn.. 

Breast-collar,  nickel,  No.  2000...  set 

■Uy.ng  cards’:"6’  r°Und . 

:.o^a^;'-Ah;rsNe?'E^,f^am&b0cat:  ifff.  fefch! - 

alking  machines,  Royal .  each 

ine’  Pomade,  5-pound  cans . per  can!! 

Patches.  18-karat  gold,  No.  2400, 

8-slze  hunting  case . each..  40.00  50.00  25 


10.97 

1.47 

6.15 
2.25 

4.28 

4.15 
7.50 
1.08 


1.05 

17.50 

2.00 

6.25 

12.75 

2.50 

6.75 

3.00 

10.00 

5.25 
15.00 

1.40 


128 


(c)  ENORMOUS  DIVIDENDS. 
Mining  Dividends. 

(Compiled  from  Mining  World,  Chicago. 

Copper  Companies. 

Dividends  since 

Mines.  organized. 

Anaconda  . $  41,400,000 

Boston  &  Montana  .  59,125  000 

Calumet  &  Hecla  . . . .. .  107,850',000 

Calumet  &  Arizona .  10,200,000 

United  Verde  Copper .  26, 545^300 

18  other  mines .  333,206,998 

Gold,  Silver  and  Lead. 

Homestake  . $  17,336,150 

Bunker  Hill  &  Sullivan .  10,596,000 

Alaska  Treadwell  .  9  585  000 

Tonopah  .  3,900,’000 

Portland  .  8,107,080 

Zinc  Mine*. 

New  Jersey  zinc...- .  12,000,000 

Six  others  . 13,062,500 

Quicksilver. 

California  mine  . $  1,070,000 

Metallurgical  Plant. 

American  Smelting  Company . $  44,581,523 

United  States  Smelting  Company .  6,079,302 

Six  other  plants  .  79,776,537 

Security  Companies. 

Amalgamated  Copper  . $  57,235,139 

Am.  Smelters  .  9,075,000 

Four  companies  .  241,266,000 

Profits  of  the  Calumet  and  Hecla  Mine. 


Capital¬ 

ization. 

$  30, OOO.OC 
3,750,00 
2,500,00 


3,000,00 
87, 097.0C 


21,840,0C 
3,000,00 
5,000,0C 
1,000,0C! 
3, OOO.OC 


10.000,0(1 


500,0' 


7,500,0(1 

187,126,8! 


$155, 000, 0< 
47,000, 0< 


(From  Report  on  the  Michigan  Strike  by  Victor  L.  Bergc 
Charles  Edward  Russell  and  Seymour  Stedman.) 

Calumet  and  Hecla  has  made  a  larger  annual  profit  on 
smaller  investment  and  for  a  longer  period  than  any  otht 
similar  enterprise  in  the  United  States,  and  possibly  in  tl 
world.  Fabulous  fortunes  have  been  built  from  its  great  profit 
Its  wealth  may  be  gauged  from  the  following  facts  taken  fro 
the  sworn  statements  of  the  president  of  the  company,  als 
published  in  Copper  Hand  Book  about  it: 

It  has  a  capital  stock  of  $2,500,000,  of  which  less  than  ha 
or  only  $12  of  each  $25  share,  has  ever  been  paid  in.  That  J 
to  say,  the  cash  actually  invested  in  it  has  been  $1,200,000.  C 
this  investment  has  been  paid,  to  and  including  1912,  dividend 
to  the  amount  of  $112,500,000,  or  $1,125  a  share,  or  about  $1( 
of  profits  for  every  dollar  of  investment.  The  annual  repo] 
February  27,  1913,  gave  the  value  of  each  share  as  $540,  $j 
having  been  paid  for  it.  The  dividends  in  the  last  few  yea 
have  been  as  follows: 


Per  cent.  Per  cent 


1897  . 

.  160 

1905  . . 

.  200 

1898  . 

.  200 

1906  . 

.  280 

1899  . 

.  400 

i907  . 

.  260 

1900  . 

.  280 

1908  . 

.  80 

1901  . 

.  180 

1909  . . 

.  109 

1902  . 

.  100 

1910  . . 

.  116 

1903  . 

1911  . . 

.  96 

1904  . 

.  160 

1912  . 

.  72 

Besides  these  great  profits,  the  salaries  paid  to  officers  ar 
directors  seem  beyond  all  reason.  The  president  of  the  cor 
pany  receives  $100,000  a  year.  Mr.  McNaughton,  in  his  capaci 
as  vice-president,  general  manager  and  director,  receives  $85,0 
a  year,  the  secretary  and  treasurer  and  each  director  drav 
$20^000  a  year. 

In  recent  years  the  company  has  bought  out  of  its  surpk 
profits,  and  by  issuing  securities,  a  controlling  interest  in 
other  mining  companies,  and  now,  in  addition  to  its  huge  di\ 
dends,  earns  the  interest  on  $8,519,000  of  notes  that  it  issui 
to  aid  in  making  these  purchases. 

Express  Companies’  Dividends. 

(From  Report  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission, 
June  8,  1912.) 

The  total  dividends  paid  by  the  10  leading  companies  sin 
1854  have  amounted  to  $212,085,392.82. 


129 

While  they  have  in  addition: 

Sink's  ovfn^d  e«ulpment  amounting  to . S  26,065,711.68 

Funded  debt  owned  .  . . * .' .’  .*  .*  .*  .*  .* .  5 4 ’ll 6 '468*97 

Other  permanent  investments  .  “  hbiiIiuc 

Other  Assets  rr6nt  aSSetS . tt&ttS 

utner  assets  .  2,324,842.86 

Or  a  total  of  assets  amounting  to.  . .  .  $185  568  46Q  68 

Their  sundry  liabilities  as  of  June  30,  19li,  *  '  69  68 


amounted  to 


$37,277,847.77. 


(From  The  Appeal’s  “Arsenal  of’ Facts’”) 
Generalizing  from  these  facts,  it  is  a  matter  beyond  contra- 
diction  that,  beginning  60  years  ago  practically  with  no  assets 
whatsoever  other  than  favorable  contracts  with  one  or  more 
railroads,  the  express  companies  have,  out  of  their  rates  and  the 
profitable  investment  of  the  proceeds  of  their  operations,  been 
enabled  to  pay  large  dividends  upon  shares  representing  no 
investment  and  amassed  over  $150,000,000  of  property. 

The  total  cost  of  the  real  property  and  equipment  used  in 
operation  by  the  ten  express  companies  named  in  the  tables  as 
*9i1,.as  reported  the  companies,  amounted  to 
$26,065,712,  and  the  operating  income  of  the  same  companies 
for  that  year  was  $9,319,486.  In  other  words  -the  investment 
returned  35.75  per  cent.  For  the  separate  companies  the  return 
varies  from  12.92  per  cent  for  the  United  States  Express  Com¬ 
pany  to  434.18  per  cent  for  the  National  Express  Company, 

Wf  an  lnvestment  of  $32,166  had  an  operating  income 

ot  $ioy,65y. 

Profits  of  Railroads. 

(From  “The  Public  Ownership  of  Railways,”  by  Carl  D. 

Thompson,  pages  13-14.) 

The  net  income  of  the  railroads  of  this  country  taking  their 
own  words  for  it  is  enormous.  And  it  is  well  known  that  there 
are  many  devices  and  wonderful  ways  of  concealing  incomes 
The  following  table  is  made  up  from  the  reports  of  the  Inter¬ 
state  Commerce  Commission  and  represents  as  nearly  as  we  can 
get  at  it  from  their  reports  the  net  earnings  or  clear  profits  of 
the  railroads,  as  reported  by  them  during  certain  years. 

After  “all  fixed  and  other  charges  are  deducted  and  being 
the  amount  availalble  for  dividends  or  surplus.” 

I904 .  __ . $357,033,579 

ll!S£ . ll .  327,445,666 

1906 !  * 


. P.  77 . 

. p-  6J .  327^090,387 

-1  qm  . P*  .  385,186,328 

Pour  hundred  mill, lion  dollars  every  year!  That  is  a  tre¬ 
mendous  sum  to  take  out  of  the  life  and  labor  of  a  nation  and 
put  in  the  hands  of  a  few  great  private  corporations. 

But  that  tells  only  a  small  part  of  the  story.  These  vast 
incomes  mean  also  a  terrific  concentration  of  wealth  in  the 
i-ands  of  a  few  money  magnates. 

„  With  the  tremendous  development  of  railroads  in  the  United 
states  came  the  development  of  the  vast  fortunes  which  have 
overshadowed  anything  of  their  kind  in  all  history.  Great 
orivate  fortunes  and  the  power  of  vast  accumulations  had  been 
cnown  before  but  never  until  the  great  railway  systems  of  the 
lation  came  into  the  hands  of  private  owners  did  such”  tre- 
nendous  concentration  and  accumulation  occur. 

t  £?rnelA«  Vanderbilt  piIed  UP  a  fortune  of  $105,000,000. 
othing  like  it  had  ever  appeared  before  in  a  corresponding 
>eriod  of  time.  Probably  nine-tenths  of  it  came  from  the 
nanipulation  of  railroads.  (“History  of  Great  American  For- 
unes,  Meyers,  Vol.  XI,  chapter  III.  ff.) 

Jay  Gould  amassed  a  vast  fortune  estimated  at  hundreds  of 
millions  also  largely  wrung  from  the  railroads  of  the  country 
ti1  story  of  Great  American  Fortunes,”  Meyers,  Vol.  II, 

nfuWm  non  SuCh  T”  may  luxuriate  in  white  marble  palaces’ 
uild  $700,000  opera  houses  to  supply  themselves  with  amuse- 


T 

lto 

ment  and  “a  permanent  harem,"  (“-Chapters  of  Erie”  by  Adams, 
pages  106-7)  live  in  houses  of  thirty  rooms,  sleep  in  bedsteads 
locnnnn*  $^5>00()  and  pass  their  time  in  vast  playrooms  costing! 
$250,000  with  private  gymnasia,  bowling  alleys,  swimming  pool 
and  great  tanbark  hippodromes  (“History  of  American  For¬ 
tunes,”  Meyers,  Vol.  Ill,  pages  100-1). 

The  Great  Northern  railway  system  produced  $458,175,877  up 
to  1906  for  Mr.  James  Hill  and  his  associates,  with  which  modest 
sum  it  is  to  be  hoped  Mr.  Hill  has  since  been  able  to  keep  the 
wolf  of  high  oost  of  living  from  the  door  (“Stories  of  the  Great 
Railroads,”  iby  Charles  Edward  Russell,  page  78).  The  Central 
and  Southern  Pacific  railway  systems  were  made  to  produce 
over  $700,000,000  of  unearned  and  unjust  profits  which  /  were 
poured  into  the  coffers  of  Mr.  C.  P.  Huntington  of  California 
and  his  associates. 

The  way  this  vast  sum  has  been  taken  out  of  the  people  of 
the  western  states  and  handed  over  to  these  few  multi-million¬ 
aires  is  graphically  summarized  by  Mr.  Russell  (“Story  of  the 
Great  Railroads,”  page  2^9)  as  follows: 

/  “The  table  does  not  show  the  total  production  of  the  million¬ 
aire-mill:  probably  no  human  mind  can  trace,  formulate  and 
accurately  state  what  that  production  has  been.'  It  shows  only 
a  part  of  the  wealth  that  without  return  of  any  kind,  we  have 
freely  bestowed  upon  this  unparalleled  institution: 

CENTRAL  PACIFIC. 

Government  land  grant,  minimum . $  30,000,000 

Unearned  dividends  in  stocks .  34,000,000 


Capitalized  interest  on  subsidy  bonds .  30,700,000 

Common  stock  (representing  no  investment) .  67,275,500 

Bonus  on  bonds. .  16,819,000 


Total  . $178,794,500 

SOUTHERN  PACIFIC. 

Government  land  grant,  minimum . $  40,000,006 

Donations  by  California  councils .  1,002,000 

Mission  Bay,  donated  by  State .  9,500,00© 

Capital  stock  (representing  no  investment) . 160,000,000 

Dividends  thereon  .  30,400,000 


Total  . $240,902,000 

SOUTHERN  PACIFIC  COMPANY  OF  KENTUCKY. 

Government  land  grant  with  Morgan  purchase . $  13,000,000 

Surplus  capitalized  (see  report  1913) .  100,081,022 

Stock  acquired  under  early  leases .  76,000,000 


Grand  total . $608,777,522 


Even  the  vast  fortunes  of  the  Rockefellers,  though  starting 
in  the  oil  industry,  very  soon  entered  the  railroad  field,  and  has 
reached  its  present  stupendous  power  through  railroad  manipu¬ 
lation  more  than  in  any  other  way. 

*John  D.  Rockefeller’s  income  is  estimated  at  from  two  to 
six  millions  of  dollars  ia  month.  Even  if  it  dwindled  down  to 
a  paltry  $100,000  per  day  he  wouldn’t  need  to  worry  about  the 
rent  and  would  have  some  left  at  the  end  of  the  year  to  buy 
up  a  railroad  or  two.  The  matter  of  founding  a  great  university 
only  take-s  a  month’s  “salary”  now  and  then  and  the  mighty 
accumulation  goes  on.  “The  money  piles  up  on  his  doorsteps 
like  a  snowstorm,  four  or  five  thousand  dollars  an  hour,  day  and 
night,  $600,000  or  more  a  week,  and  it  must  be  invested”  (Par¬ 
son’s  “Railways,  Trusts  and  the  People,”  page  13).  It  is  invested 
— in  more  railroads.  More  railroads  mean  more  profits,  which 
in  turn  must  again  be  invested.  And  thus  on  to  the  climax. 

There  are  now  but  five  of  six  great  railroad  groups  in  the 
United  States.  These  are  rapidly  merging  into  one— and  there 
is  reason  to  believe  that  it  is  only  a  matter  of  time  till  the 
whole  railway  system  of  America,  by  far  the  greatest  in  the 
world,  will  be  dominated  by  a  single  interest,  perhaps  by  a 
single  individual. 

Such  is  the  tremendous  cumulative  power  of  privately  owned 
railways.  Nothing  approaching  it  has  ever  oocurred  before  in 
the  world’s  history. 


131 

Delaware,  Lackawanna  &  Western  Railroad  Profits. 

®  (From  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  of  February  1,  1913.) 

The  Delaware,  Lackawanna  &  Western  is  merely  a  rail¬ 
road— not  a  system.  It  has  never  been  reorganized,  consoli¬ 
dated,  expanded  or  financed.  It  was  built  from  the  proceeds 
of  its  capital  stock  and  has  no  bonds.  It  traverses  a  rich  terri¬ 
tory  and  is  reasonably  prosperous,  paying  its  stockholders  10 
per  cent  a  year  in  regular  cash  dividends.  In  1909  it  gave  them 
in  addition  an  extra  cash  privilege  to  subscribe  at  par  to  some 
coal  stock  which  later  sold  at  $200  a  share  and  now  pays  10  per 
cent  dividends.  Including  this  privilege,  Lackawanna’s  share¬ 
holders’  melon  that  year  amounted  to  about  200  per  cent,  or 
$2  for  every  dollar  of  par  value  of  their  stock. 

The  next  year  was  comparatively  lean,  shareholders  receiv¬ 
ing  only  20  per  cent  in  cash  dividends. 

In  1911  shareholders  received,  in  addition  to  the  regular  10 
per  cent,  an  extra  cash  dividend  of  10  per  cent  and  a  35  per 
cent  dividend  in  4  per  cent  guaranteed  stock. 

In  1912  shareholders  were  given  the  privilege  of  subscribing 
at  par  to  40  per  cent  of  new  stock,  the  right  being  equivalent 
to  a  dividend  of  138  per  cent — making  altogether  something 
like  400  per  cent  in  four  years. 

Of  course,  Lackawanna  is  quite  exceptional  among  rail¬ 
roads — partly  because  it  has  been  merely  a  railroad  rather  than 
a  subject  for  dazzling  manipulations  in  Wall  Street. 

Standard  Oil  Company’s  Profits. 

(From  “Concentration  and  Control,”  by  Charles  R.  Van  Hise, 

pages  109-110.  Published  by  the  Macmillan  Company.) 

The  total  dividends  paid  by  the  Standard  Oil  Company  from 
1882  to  1906  were  over  $550,000,000,  on  an  average  over  $22,- 
000,000  a  year.  This,  however,  doe’s  not  represent  the  total  net 
earnings,  since  there  were  large  accumulations  not  declared  as 
dividends.  From  1882  to  189,6  the  profits  on  the  capital  stock 
and  trust  certificates  average  about  19  per  cent.  In  1903  they 
had  reached  83  per  cent  and  the  average  from  1903  to  1905  was 
about  68  per  cent,  annually.  The  total  profits  from  1897  to 
1906  are  believed  to  be  somewhere  from  $790,000,000  to  $850,- 
000,000;  and  this  upon'  properties  the  value  of  which  originally 
aggregated  not  more  than  $75,000,000.  These  figures  show  that 
after  monopoly  was  obtained  and  improvements  made  in  trans¬ 
portation  and  manufacturing,  it  was  possible  because  of  this 
situation  to  secure  these  enormous  profits. 

It  is  notable  that  excessive  profits  came  about,  not  by  taking 
any  very  large  amount  from  a  single  gallon  of  oil,  not  more 
than  two  or  three  cents,  and  yet  these  two  or  three  cents  multi¬ 
plied  by  the  enormous  number  of  gallons  used  by  the  people 
of  the  United  States  led  to  the  vast  profits  above  given.  The 
Standard  Oil  industry  very  well  illustrates  the  principle  that 
if  a  commodity  'is  widely  needed,  even  if  one  family  uses  a 
relatively  small  amount,  and  the  average  annual  tribute  levied 
upon  that  family  is  small,  if  there  be  a  moderate  excess  beyond 
that  of  a  fair  price,  the  total  illegitimate  profits  of  the  organi¬ 
zation  may  be  fabulous;  not  only  so,  but  the  accumulation  of 
these  enormous  profits  in  the  hands  of  a  few  men  may  enable 
them  to  invest  in  other  lines  of  business  which  have  monopo¬ 
listic  elements,  and  they  thus  gain  a  commanding  influence  in 
the  industry  of  the  country.  It  is  well  known  that  the  excess¬ 
ive  profits  which  have  gone  to  the  owners  of  the  Standard  Oil 
Company  have  enabled  them  to  enter  many  other  great  lines 
3f  business,  so  that  they,  with  their  railroads,  industrial  organi¬ 
zations,  trust  companies  and  banks  are  one  of  the  two  great 


132 


dominating  centers  which  in  large  measure  control  the  money 
of  the  United  States. 

Money  Grows  Like  Mushroom. 

Sum  of  $396,171  Invested  in  Standard  Oil  Increases  1,000  Per 
Cent  in  Twenty-two  Years. 

(From  the  Chicago  Tribune,  October  18,  1913.) 

New  York,  October  18. — The  way  in  which  money  grows 
wa/s  illustrated  today  by  the  report  of  Referee  J.  Campbell 
Thompson  to  the  Supreme  Court  in  the  matter  of  'the  'trust 
fund  for  the  benefit  of  Albert  C.  Bostwick. 

In  1890  Jabez  A.  Bostwick  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  Farm¬ 
ers’  Loan  and  Trust  Company,  Standard  Oil  securities  to  the 
value  of  $296,171  for  the  benefit  of  his  son  Albert. 

When  Albert  died  last  November  the  securities  were  worth 
$1,642,611.  During  his  lifetime  the  younger  Bostwick  drew  from 
the  fund  the  additional  sum  of  $1,022,227.  So  that  the  total 
amount  produced  by  the  stock  was  $2,664,838.  The  increase  in 
value  is  nearly  1,000  per  cent. 

Profits  of  U.  S.  Steel  Corporation. 

(Earnings  and  Investment  as  Computed  by  the  Bureau  of 
Corporations.) 

From  summary  of  the  report  of  Commissioner  Smith,  July 
1,  1911: 

From  Senate  Document  No.  54,  Sixty-first  Congress,  First  Session. 

Total  investment 


in  tangible 

Earnings. 

Year  ended  Dec.  31 — 

property. 

Amount.  Per  Ct. 

1901  a  . 

...$  698,869,756 

77,741,231 

614.8 

1902  . 

121,502,344 

15.9 

1903  . 

94,156,958 

11.7 

1904  . 

62,491,950 

7.6 

1905  . 

874,840,920 

112,830,835 

12.9 

1906  . 

947,397,884 

143,393,707 

15.1 

1907  . 

155,416,873 

14.4 

1908  . 

..  1,090,425,487 

84,793,296 

7.8 

1909  . 

.  .  1,146,875,993 

120,807,579 

10.5 

1910  . 

..  1,186,982,038 

127,216,084 

10.7 

Total  . 

1,100,350,857 

Average . 

...  941,258,472 

c  112,856,498 

12*.  6 

a.  Nine  months,  April  to  December;  investment  includes  addi¬ 
tions  during  this  period. 

6  Indicated  rate  per  annum  based  on  actual  earnings  for  nine 
months. 

c  Average  yeaTly  profits  for  nine  and  three-fourths  years. 

Profits  of  the  Tobacco  Trust. 

(From  “Concentration  and  Control,”  by  Charles  R.  Van  Hise, 
page  145.  Published  by  the  Macmillan  Company.) 

After  the  formation  of  the  reorganized  American  Tobacco 
Company  in  1904,  the  average  earnings  upon  actual  investments 
to  1908  were  19  per  cent,  or  $31,200,000  yearly;  and  this  upon 
the  basis  of  a  capitalization  of  $316,000,000,  which  was  reached 
by  several  manipulations,  each  with  great  expansion  of  the  stock 
and  bonds. 

The  combination  was  greatly  assisted  in  securing  these 
enormous  profits  through  changes  in  the  internal  revenues.  In 
1898,  as  a  result  of  the  Spanish  War,  taxes  were  greatly  in¬ 
creased  upon  tobacco  and  prices  were  raised  accordingly.  In 
1901-1902  this  tax  was  reduced  to  its  former  level;  but  by  this 
time  the  combination  had  become  sufficiently  powerful  to  hold 
up  prices,  so  that  practically  all  of  the  advantage  of  the  reduc¬ 
tion  of  the  tax  on  the  manufactured  tobacco  from  twelve  cents 
to  six  cents  per  pound  went,  not  to  the  consumer,  but  to  the 
combination,  in  this  way  adding  many  millions  to  its  income. 

The  enormous  profits  of  the  combination  were  thus  due 
largely  to  the  following  causes:  The  reduction  of  the  Spanish 
War  tax,  the  capitalization  of  the  good  will  of  the  business  at 
each  consolidation  or  reorganization,  putting  in  surplus  to  in¬ 
crease  the  capital  stock,  exchanging  at  inflated  values  at  times 
of  reorganization  and  issuing  common  stock  as  a  bonus. 


133 


Profits  of  Banks. 


BaSed  upon  the  reports  of  a  number  of  banks  to  the  govern- 

lon^  °^Cla  j-f°r  T^he  period  of  five  years,  beginning  January  1, 
1906,  and  ending  December  31,  1910: 


Total  gains 
for  5  years. 

First  National  Bank,  Chicago . . .  S>r2Crent‘ 

National  Bank,  Wheeling,  W.'  Va! ! ! ! ! ! ! !  212150 

g  rsf  National  Bank  of  Richmond,  Va .  217.25 

First  National  Bank,  New  York  City.  .  217  28 

National  Bank  of  Commerce,  Norfolk,  Va! ! ! ! !  235* 
-?h't5i0nT BaJ1TT  of  Virginia,  Richmond. . .  256.30 
The  Rhode  Island  Hospital  &  Trust  Co.,  Provi- 

f-  banking  business) .  264" 

I?!-?8®6!?  Na^onal  Bank,  Springfield,  Mass..  275 

_ Na t  i  o  n  al  Bank,  Boston,  Mass .  355 

The  Northern  National  Bank,  Toledo,  Ohio _  379.10 

The  Norfolk  National  Bank,  Norfolk,  Va....  394  51 

The  Lowry  National  Bank,  Atlanta,  Ga .  420* 

?^5nxrE^Chai^8‘4  National  Bank,  Phila.,  Pa.  437.50 

n£adxFs  National  Bank,  Spokane,  Wash .  500 

Sa?fau  National  Bank  of  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.  556.65  * 
The  National  Bank  of  Syracuse,  N.  Y .  559  60 


Averag* 
per  year. 
Per  cent. 
30.65 

42.50 
43.45 
43.45 
48 

51.26 

52.80 

55 

71.10 

75.82 

78.90 

84 

87.50 
100 
111.33 
111.92 


PART  IV 


LABOR  UNDER  CAPITALISM 


1.  Number  of  Persons  Employed  in  Specified  Occupations. 
Distribution,  as  Men,  Women  and  Children,  of  Persons  Engaged 
in  Gainful  Occupations  and  in  Each  Main  Class,  1900. 

(United  States  Census  Reports,  1900.) 


Total  persons 
gainfully  occu- 

Classes  of  occupations,  1900  pied. 

All  occupations  . 29,073,233 

Agricultural  pursuits  . 10,381,765 

Professional  service  .  1,258,538 

Domestic  and  personal  service .  5,580,657 

Trade  and  transportation .  4,766,964 


MEN 


Manufact’g 


and  mechanical  pursuits  7,085,309 


WOMEN. 
Number. 
4,833,630 
770,055 
429,497 
1,953,467 
481,159 
1,199,452 


BOYS. 


Pet. 

16.6 

7.4 

34.1 
35.0 

10.1 
16.9 


Number. 

1,264,411 

854,690 

1,845 

137,049 

100,174 

170,653 


Pet. 

4.4 
8.2 
0.1 

2.5 
2.1 
2.4 


Number. 
22,489,425 
8,549,739 
826,096 
3,348,159 
4,163,443 
5,601,988 

GIRLS. 

Number. 

485,767 

207,281 

1,100 

141,982 

22,188 

113,216 


Pet. 

77.* 

82.4 

65.7 

60.® 

87.1 

7*.l 


Pet. 

1.7 

2.0 

0.1 

2.5 

0.5 

l.« 


2.  The  Division  Into  Classes. 

(a)  THE  THREE  PRINCIPAL  CLASSES. 

(Morris  Hillquit  in  “Socialism,  Promise  or  Menace,”  by  Hill- 
quit  and  Ryan;  1914.  The  Macmillan  Co.) 


According  to  the  census  of  1900,  the  total  number  of  per¬ 
sons,  ten  years  old  and  over,  engaged  in  gainful  occupations  in 
the  United  States  was  a  little  over  29,000,000. 

Of  the  persons  engaged  in  manufacture,  5,373,108  were  class¬ 
ified  as  “wage  earners,”  while  708,738  were  designated  as  pro¬ 
prietors  and  firm  members.  According  to  the  Report  on  Manu¬ 
factures  of  1909,  63.2  per  cent  of  the  manufacturing  establish¬ 
ments  produced  less  than  $20,000  per  annum,  while  the  remain¬ 
ing  36.8  per  cent  produced  upward  of  $20,000.  Let  us  classify 
the  proprietors  of  the  former  as  “small  producers,”  or  “middle 
class”  manufacturers,  and  those  of  the  latter  as  “large  pro¬ 
ducers,”  or  capitalists.  On  this  basis  we  obtain  approximately 
254,810  capitalists  and  447,928  members  of  the  middle  class  in 
the.  manufacturing  industries. 

For  the  10,472,011  persons  enumerated  under  the  two  heads 
of  “Domestic  and  Personal  Service”  and  “Trade  and  Transpor¬ 
tation”  the  census  does  not  give  a  similar  division  by  classes, 
the  sub-enumerations  of  specific  operations  furnish  a  tolerably 
reliable  guide  to  the  economic  status  of  the  persons  engaged  in 


Thus  we  may  consider  as  capitalists  all  persons  designated 
as  bankers  and  brokers,  officials  of  banks  and  companies,  and 
wholesale  merchants  and  dealers.  To  the  hybrid  middle  class 
we  may  relegate  all  small  independent  business  men,  such  as 
barbers;  hotel,  restaurant,  boarding  house,  livery  stable^  and 
saloon  keepers;  retail  merchants;  “hucksters  and  peddlers,  _  and 
even  undertakers;  also  all  individuals  engaged  in  professional 
and  semi-professional  service,  including  free  practitioners, 
clerks,  bookkeepers,  foremen,  commercial  travelers,  agents, 
soldiers,  policemen  and  housekeepers.  .  .  . 

The  column  of  “wage  earners”  will  be  made  up  exclusive  y 

of  hired  manual  laborers  mdinR7>7  nersons 

The  agricultural  population  consisted  of  10,410,877  persons. 

Of  these  about  4,530,000  were  “farm  hands  or  other  hired 


135 


laborers,  while  the  remainder  consisted  of  “farm  operators.” 
Only  527,637  farms  had  an  area  of  260  acres  or  more.  We  will 
assume  that  each  of  these  farms  had  a  separate  owner,  and  will 
consider  such  big-farm  owners  as  agricultural  capitalists,  class¬ 
ifying  the  owners  or  cultivators  of  the  smaller  sized  farms  with 
the  all-embracing  “middle  class.” 

On  this  basis  we  reach  the  following  class  division  of  the 
active  American  population: 


CAPITALISTS. 

Manufacturing-  and  Mechanical .  254  810 

Trade  and  Transportation  .  189  675 

Farmers  .  5271637 


Total  .  972,122 

MIDDLE  CLASS. 

Manufacturing  and  Mechanical .  447,928 

Trade  and  Transportation .  2, 242,’ 397 

Domestic  and  Personal  Service .  790  834 

Professional  Service  (all) . . .  1  258  538 

Farmers  .  5’, 880^877 


Total  . 10,620,574 

WAGE  EARNERS. 

Manufacturing  and  Mechanical .  5,373,108 

Trade  and  Transportation .  2,334,892 

Domestic  and  Personal  Service... .  4,’789,’823 

Farm  Laborers  .  4^5 3 0*000 


Total  . 17,027,823 


To  complete  our  calculations  we  must  add  the  “unemployed” 
.  of  both  classes,  capitalists  and  wage  workers.  To  be  generous 
with  the  former  we  will  assume  t»hat  one-third  of  their  total 
number  follow  the  sole  and  exclusive  vocation  of  being  idle, 
while  two-thirds  are  engaged  in  some  “gainful”  occupation — 
thus  adding  another  500,000,  in  round  figures,  to  their  numbers. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  number  of  wage  earners  enumerated  in 
the  census  is  based  on  the  “average”  actually  employed  on 
specified  days,  and  does  not  take  into  account  the  workers 
temporarily  or  permanently  without  jobs.  Since  the  number  of 
persons  unemployed  during  some  time  of  the  year  amounted, 
according  to  the  same  census,  to  no  less  than  6,468,964,  it  is  safe 
to  add  an  average  of  1,500,000  to  the  column  of  wage  workers. 

Thus  the  total  number  of  American  capitalists  does  not 
exceed  in  round  numbers  1,500,000;  that  of  the  “middle  classes” 
may  reach  about  10,500,000,  while  the  number  of  wage  workers 
must  be  conservatively  estimated  at  about  18,500,000. 

Twenty-three  Million  Possible  Socialists. 

Of  the  30,500,000  persons  figuring  in  our  estimate,  only 
1,500,000  are  unquestioned  beneficiaries  of  the  capitalist  system 
and  interested  in  its  continuation;  18,500,000  are  its  victims  and 
economically  interested  in  its  abrogation.  Of  the  remaining 
10,500,000  persons,  designated  as  the  middle  class  or  classes,  the 
majority  are  in  revolt  against  the  existing  system.  More  than 
a  third  of  the  American  farmers  are  mere  tenants  whose  lot  is 
often  worse  than  that  of  the  wage  worker,  and  the  greater  part 
of  the  farm  owners  are  exploited  by  the  mortgagees,  railroad 
companies  and  other  capitalistic  agencies  almost  ,as  much  as  the 
wage  worker.  The  professional  men  and  “salaried”  employes 
likewise  feej  the  burdens  of  economic  pressure  weighing  on 
them  ever  more  heavily  under  Capitalism.  It  is  safe  to  assert 
that  at  least  one-half  of  the  persons  embraced  within  the  general 
category  of  the  “middle  classes”  are  justly  dissatisfied  with  their 
conditions. 

Adding  these  to  the  number  of  the  wage  workers,  we  obtain 
about  23,750,000  persons,  or  about  78  per  cent  of  the  entire 
active  population,  who  are  materially  interested  in  a  change 
of  the  present  economic  order  and  may  be  regarded  as  possible 
candidates  for  enlistment  in  the  Socialist  movement. 


136 

(b)  THE  WORKERS  CLASSIFIED  BY  OCCUPATION. 

(W.  J.  Ghent  in  National  Socialist  Handbook  No.  2.) 

There  are  3s  yet  no  detailed  occupation  statistics  for  the 
census  of  1910.  The  figures,  however,  can  be  estimated  with 
tolerable  certainty.  The  percentage  of  the  population  engaged 
in  gainful  occupations  was  34.7  in  1880,  37.2  in  1890,  38.2  in  1900. 
For  1910  it  can  hardly  be  less  than  40  per  cent.  If  this  per¬ 
centage  obtains,  the  number  will  be  found  to  have  grown  from 
29,073,233  in  1900  to  about  36,800,000  in  1910. 

The  census  tables  are  not  in  such  form  that  the  proportion 
of  wage  earners  to  all  other  gainful  occupations  can  be  accu¬ 
rately  determined.  This  is  a  matter  for  the  individual  statisti¬ 
cian  and,  of  course,  computations  will  differ.  Mr.  Lucien  Sanial 
figured  out  20,393,137  wage  earners  in  the  1900  census.  W.  J. 
Ghent’s  computations  give  20,234.851.  If  the  latter  figures  are 
correct,  the  percentage  is  69.60.  Assuming  that  the  percentage 
for  the  last  census  will  be  found  to  be  70,  the  number  of  wage 
earners  in  1910  was  25,760,000. 

The  total  persons  in  gainful  occupations  in  1900  were  divided 
by  classes  as  follows: 

Classes.  Number.  Per  cent. 

Greater  capitalists  .  364,978  1.25 

Lesser  capitalists  .  1,456,258  5.01 

Professional  class  . 1,25<3,538  4.38 

Farm  owners  and  tenants .  5,758,308  19.81 

Working  class  .  20,234,851  69.60 

Total  . 29,073,233  100.00 

The  groups  in  the  working  class,  with  the  per  'cent  of 

increase  over  1890,  were  as  follows: 

Per  cent  of 

Groups.  Increase  Number. 

Clerical  and  distributive  workers .  48.4  3,825,375 

Mechanical,  manufacturing  and  mining  workers  23.8  6,538,147 

Personal  and  domestic  workers .  26.3  2,618,910 

Farm  and  rural  workers .  44.7  4,623,157 

General  workers  . 37.4  2,620,262 

Total  . 34.4  20,234,851 

The  officials  of  the  census  of  1900  believe  that  approximately 
582,522  children  engaged  in  farm  labor  were  omitted  from 
enumeration  in  1890. 

In  the  new  figures  there  will  doubtless  be  a  decline,  as  there 
was  in  the  previous  decade,  in  the  relative  number  of  workers 
in  mechanical,  manufacturing  and  mining  jobs,  since  the 
statistics  of  all  capitalist  countries  show  a  relative  decrease  in 
the  number  of  persons  who  make  things,  as  compared  with 
those  who  sell,  handle  and  transport  things  and  render  other 
kinds  of  service.  In  other  respects  the  new  figures  will  prob¬ 
ably  show  about  the  same  relative  standing  of  the  groups  as 
has  been  shown  for  1900. 

(c)  WORKERS  AND  IDLERS. 

(From  Appeal  to  Reason’s  “Arsenal  of  Facts,”  1914.) 

The  population  of  continental  United  States  in  1900  was 
75,994,575.  The  number  of  persons  engaged  in  gainful  occupa¬ 
tions  was  29,073,233,  or  38.3  per  cent  of’  the  total  population. 
In  other  words,  a  trifle  more  than  one-third  of  the  people  in 
the  United  States  did  all  the  work  which  created  the  wealth  to 
support  the  entire  population.  Nearly  two-thirds  of  the  people 
created  no  wealth  for  their  own  support. 

There  were  58,224,600  persons  who  were  ten  years  of  age 
and  over.  Those  engaged  in  gainful  occupations  were  almost 
exactly  one-half  (50.2  per  cent)  of  this  number.  Therefore,  one- 
half  of  the  population  ten  years  of  age  and  over  created  no 
wealth  for  its  own  support. 

Of  the  10,381,765  persons  engaged  in  agricultural  pursuits, 
4,410,877  were  agricultural  laborers,  and  5,674,875  were  farmers, 


137 


planters  and  overseers.  It  is,  of  course,  certain  that  a  great 
many  of  those  who  are  classed  as  farmers,  planters  and  over¬ 
seers  produce  no  wealth  and  perform  no  really  useful  function 
in  industry.  They  are  merely  profit  takers,  parasites  upon  in¬ 
dustry  rather  than  wealth  producers.  Nevertheless,  it  is  impos¬ 
sible  to  make,  any  separation  between  useful  and  non-useful 
members  of  this  general  class,  and  we  may  roughly  assume  that 
all  of  those  engaged  in  agricultural  pursuits  are  wealth  pro¬ 
ducers. 

The  1,258,538  persons  engaged  in  professional  service  con¬ 
stitute  a  serving  class,  many  of  whom  perform  service  that  is 
socially  necessary,  and  although  none  of  them  produce  wealth 
society  gladly  supports  the  class  as  a  whole  for  the  service  it 
performs.  This  class  includes  doctors,  lawyers,  actors,  artists, 
musicians,  clergymen,  teachers,  etc.  They  are  not  wealth  pro¬ 
ducers,  merely  consumers. 

Among  the  5,580,687  persons  engaged  in  domestic  and  per¬ 
sonal  service  there  are  no  producers  and  many  actual  destroyers 
of.  wealth,,  as  well  as  thousands  of  absolutely  useless  function¬ 
aries.  This  class  includes  soldiers,  sailors,  and  marines  (army 
and  navy),  saloonkeepers,  bartenders  and  1,560,721  servants  and 
waiters.  The  class  as  a  whole  consumes  and  destroys  much 
wealth  and  produces  absolutely  nothing. 

The  4,766,964  persons  engaged  in  trade  and  transportation 
constitute,  irj  the  main,  a  necessary  class  performing  a  social 
service  in  distributing  the  wealth  produced  by  others.  This 
class  includes .  agents,  bankers  and  brokers,  merchants,  sales¬ 
men,  commercial  travelers,  stenographers  and  typewriters,  book¬ 
keepers  and  accountants,  sailors,  hackmen  and  draymen,  team¬ 
sters,  railroad  employes,  telegraph  and  telephone  operators,  etc. 
Many  of  these  persons  would  find  their  occupations  gone  under 
a  rational  system  of  industry,  but  under  the  existing  system 
they  perform  useful  and  necessary  labor;  nevertheless,  they  are 
essentially  consumers  of  wealth,  not  producers. 

Among  the  7,085,309  persons  engaged  in  manufacturing  and 
merchanical  pursuits  there  are  many  real  wealth  producers. 
Thousands  of  them,  of  course,  are  engaged  in  the  production 
of  entirely  useless  articles,  made  solely  to  supply  a  fictitious 
competitive  demand — articles  which  would  not  be  manufactured 
at  all  were  it  not  for  the  profit  derived  from  them.  In  the 
printing  trades,  for  instance,  thousands  of  printers,  pressmen, 
lithographers,  papermakers,  etc.,  are  kept  busy  supplying  the 
enormous  mass  of  competitive  advertising,  the  vast  majority  of 
which  is  pure  waste  and  entirely  useless.  Nevertheless,  as  is 
the  case  with  those  engaged  in  agricultural  pursuits,  it  is  im¬ 
possible  in  this  class  to  separate  the  producers  from  the  non- 
producers. 

Roughly  speaking,  therefore,  we  may  take  the  17,467,074 
persons  engaged  in  these  two  principal  classes  of  occupations  as 
representative  of  all  the  wealth  producers  in  the  nation,  the 
persons  upon  whom  the  entire  population  depends  for  food 
clothing  and  shelter. 

This  number  constitutes  (but  22.9  per  cent  of  the  entire 
population  and  but  30.1  of  the  population  ten  years  of  age  and 
over.  And  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  of  these  17  467  074 
wealth  producers,  3,415,347,  or  19.5  per  cent  of  the  whole 
number,  were  women  and  children. 


(d)  UNNECESSARY  OCCUPATIONS. 


Are  All  These  Necessary? 

(From  United  States  Census  of  1900.) 

Lawyers  . 

Saloonkeepers  . . . 

Soldiers,  sailors  and  marine  (U.  S.  j  . ! ! ! ! . . 


114,460 

83,764 

43,195 


138 


Watchmen,  policemen,  firemen,  etc . 130,590 

Agents  .  241,162 

Bankers  and  brokers .  73,227 

Commercial  travelers .  92,919 

Servants  and  waiters  . 1,560,721 

Bookkeepers  and  accountants  .  254,880 

Clerks  and  copyists  .  630,127 

Merchants,  dealers  (except  wholesale) .  790,886 

Hucksters  and  peddlers  .  76,649 

Merchants  and  dealers  (/wholesale) .  42,326 

Messengers,  errand  and  office  boys .  71,622 

Officials  of  banks  and  companies .  74,072 

Salesmen  and  saleswomen  .  611,139 


Total  . 4,891,739 


(e)  WHAT  CHANCE  HAS  A  WORKINGMAN  TO 
BECOME  A  CAPITALIST? 

(From  “Financing  the  Wage  Earner’s  Family,”  by  Prof.  Scott 
Nearing,  pages  13-14.  Published  by  B.  W.  Huebsich.) 

The  maximum  amount  of  income  which  the  workingman 
may  earn  is  limited.  To  be  sure,  there  is  always  a  possibility 
of  the  workingman  rising  out  of  the  ranks  of  the  workers  and 
becoming  a  manager  or  a  capitalist.  The  existence  of  this 
chance  to  rise  has  never  been  questioned,  though  its  mathemat¬ 
ical  boundaries  are  not  always  understood.  Consider,  for 
example,  one  of  the  greatest  single  industries  in  the  United 
States,  the  Railroad  Industry,  employing  nearly  a  million  and 
three-quarters  of  men.  What  are  the  possibilities  for  advance¬ 
ment  in  this  industry  as  shown  by  the  statistics  of  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission? 

There  were,  in  1910,  5,476  general  officers  directing  the  activ¬ 
ities  of  the  million  and  three-quarters  employes.  Therefore,  in 
the  business  life  of  the  general  officer  and  the  business  life  of 
the  employe,  each  employe  should  have  one  chance  in  three 
hundred  of  becoming  a  general  officer  at  some  time  during  his 
life,  provided  that  the  employes  live  as  long  as  the  general 
officers,  and  provided  further  that  all  the  general  officers  are 
drawn  from  the  ranks  of  the  employes.  Neither  of  these 
assumptions,  however,  is  correct,  because,  in  the  first  place, 
insurance  tables  indicate  that  the  life  of  the  general  officer  is 
somewhat  longer  than  the  life  of  the  average  workingman. 
In  the  second  place,  the  general  officers  are  not  always  drawn 
from  the  ranks.  Leaving  these  two  considerations  out  of 
account,  however,  it  is  apparent  that  the  mathematical  proba¬ 
bility  that  the  average  railroad  employe  will  become  a  general 
officer  is  about  one-third  of  one  per  cent. 

Consider  another  phase  of  the  situation.  Suppose  that  you 
are  a  railroad  trainman.  Mathematically  you  have  one  chance 
in  three  hundred  of  becoming  a  general  officer  at  some  time 
during  your  life.  On  the  other  hand,  you  have  one  chance  in 
twenty  of  being  injured,  and  one  chance  in  one  hundred  and 
twenty  of  being  killed  during  each  year  that  you  are  at  work. 

Suppose  that  your  total  term  of  service  is  twenty  years,  the 
chances  are  one  to  one  that  during  that  time  you  will  be  injured 
and  one  to  six  that  during  that  time  you  will  be  killed;  so  that 
the  chance  of  your  being  injured  is  three  hundred  times  as 
great, x  and  of  your  being  killed  is  fifty  times  as  great  as  your 
chance  of  becoming  a  general  officer  in  the  company  which  is 
employing  you. 

A  similar  condition  exists  in  the  manufacturing  industries. 

In  short,  the  tendency  of  modern  industry  is  toward  a  form 
of  organization  which  will  require  the  wage  worker  to  remain 
a  wage  worker.  The  railroad  does  not  expect  a  brakeman  to 
become  president  or  general  manager,  but  instead  to  become  a 
conductor.  In  the  same  way,  section  hands  make  section  fore¬ 
men,  and  locomotive  firemen  make  locomotive  engineers.  The 
railroad  manager  is  not  looking  for  an  engineer  who  will  make 


139 


a  general  superintendent,  but  for  an  engineer  who  will  be  and 
will  remain  a  good  engineer. 

3.  Hand  and  Machine  Labor. 

The  Decrease  in  the  Cost  of  Making  Shoes.  Who  Profits? 

(From  the  New  York  Herald,  January  1,  1912.) 

Facts  obtained  by  Herald  reporters  in  the  various  shoe  man¬ 
ufacturing  centers  of  New  England  show  that  90  per  cent  of  the 
men  who  have  gone  into  the  business  of  shoe  manufacturing 
have  become  wealthy,  and  that  many  of  them  started  with 
barely  sufficient  capital  to  pay  for  the  lights  in  their  factory 
buildings. 

Modern  shoe  manufacturing  machinery  has  made  cuts  in  the 
cost  of  production  that  are  astonishing.  Before  the  introduc¬ 
tion  of  machinery  the  cost  of  making  a  pair  of  shoes  that  sold 
for  from  $6.50  to  $7  a  pair  was  from  $2.80  to  $2.90.  Added  to 
this,  of  course,  was  the  cost  of  material.  The  cost  of  making 
shoes  which  sell  today  at  from  $3  to  $7  a  pair  is  between  60 
and  70  cents.  In  the  last  ten  years  the  cost  of  production  has 
been  lowered  at  least  ten  cents  a  pair,  declares  a  manufacturer 
who  has  been  in  business  for  35  years. 

(From  Appeal’s  “Arsenal  of  Facts,”  1914.) 

The  following  table  is  compiled  from  the  Thirteenth  Annual 
Labor  Report,  which  presents  in  detail  the  results  of  an  investi¬ 
gation  by  the  United  States  Labor  Commissioner,  showing  the 
difference  in,  time  required,  to  produce  a  certain  number  of  units 
of  manufacture  by  the  hand  process  and  by  the  machine  process. 
The  report  is  out  of  print.  This  table  is  valuable  and  should 
be  preserved.  With  it  you  can  discover  at  a  glance  the  differ¬ 
ence  in  the  two  methods,  and  you  will  begin  to  understand  why 
the  owners  of  the  machines  wax  rich  while  the  worker  struggles 
to  live.  For  instance,  under  the  old  hand  method  it  required 
118  hours  to  make  one  landslide  plow.  .  Today,  with  modern 
machinery,  it  requires  less  than  four  hours.  The  worker  today 
produces  30  plows  in  the  same  length  of  time  it  formerly  re¬ 
quired  to  make  one  plow.;  If  he  worked  in  the  good  old  days 
for  $1  a  day,  it  cost  his  boss  about  $11  in  wages.  Today  he 
gets  $2  a  day  and  in  eleven  days  gets  $22  in  wages.  For  this 
outlay  on  the  part  of  the  capitalist  he  gets  30  plows.  In  other 
words,  the  capitalist  doubles  the  wage  fund  and  increases  his 
wealth  30  times — or,  assuming  that  plows  have  decreased  one- 
half  in  price,  he  still  has  wealth  15  times  greater  than  did  his 
predecessor.  The  laborer  gets  for  his  $2  today  just  what  his 
father  got  for  $1 — “his  board  and  keep.”  Go  down  the  list  and 
you  will  grasp  the  significance  of  the  figures  and  will  know  the 
t  secret  of  capitalist  accumulation: 


Manufacture. 


— Hours — 
Hand  Mchn. 
mthd.  mthd. 


Pitchforks — 50  pitchforks,  12-inch  tines .  200  12 

Plow — 1  landslide  plow,  oak  beams  and  handles .  118  3 

Bags — 5,000  cotton  flour  sacks .  137  28 

Bookbinding — 500  12mo.  books,  320  pages,  full  cloth..  228  59 

Shoes — 10  pairs  men’s  fine  grade,  calf,  welt,  lace  shoes, 

single  soles,  soft  box  toes .  222  29 

Boxes — 1,000  strawboard,  paper-covered,  shoe  boxes, 

Il%x6x3 %  in .  228  34 

Crackers — 1,000  lbs.  graham  crackers,  packed .  160  35 

Carpet — 200  yards  ingrain  carpet,  cotton  warp,  wool 

filling,  1,088  ends,  26  picks  per  inch .  151  64 

Carriage — 1  elliptic  spring,  leather  top  buggy,  piano 

body,  dropped  axles,  banded  hubs,  cloth  trimmings  200  39 

Watch  cases — 10  gold  hunting  watch  cases,  18  size, 

engine  turned,  "Barleycorn  shield”  pattern .  174  35 

Watch  movements — 1  key-wind,  brass  hunting  watch 

movement,  18  size,  full  plate .  195  5 

Combs — 1  gross  horn  dressing  combs,  7x77%  inches, 

coarse  and  fine,  teeth  1 %  inches .  66  12 

Barrels — 100  flour  barrels,  patent  hoops .  50  22 


140 


— Hours — 
Hand  Mchn. 

Rope  30  pounds  %-inch  hemp  bailing  rope .  134  ^^*7 

Corsets — 1  dozen  medium  sateen  corsets,  17  eyelets 

in  back  .  210  18 

Hatchets — 12  dozen  No.  2  shingling  hatchets,  22  pounds 

per  dozen  .  191  54 

Firearms — 1  double-barreled,  breech-loading,  hammer- 

less  shotgun  .  202  68 

Pamphlets — Printing  and  binding  4,000  pamphlets,  32 

pages,  3%x5%  inches .  234  5 

Newspapers — Printing  and  folding  36,000  pages .  216 

Lithography — Printing  1,000  sheets  art  work,  19x28 

inches,  6  colors  .  281  6 

Typesetting — 100,000  ems,  newspaper  work .  209  46 

Envelopes — 50,000  No.  6%  plain  white  envelopes....  217  16 

Butter — 500  pounds,  in  tubs  .  125  12 

Shirts — 1  dozen  white  muslin  shirts  plaited  linen 

bosoms,  linen-covered  collars  and  cuffs  attached..  119  16 

Lounges — 12  oak  frame,  round  end,  plush-covered 

lounges,  69x23  inches,  antique  finish . . .  246  46 

Harness — 1  set  double  coach  harness,  traces  10  stitches 

per  inch  .  234  40 

Agriculture. 

Barley — 100  bushels  .  211  9 

Corn — 50  bushels,  shelled,  stalks,  husks  and  blades  cut 

into  fodder .  228  34 

Corn — 50  bushels,  husked,  stalks  left  in  field .  48  18 

Cotton — Seed  cotton,  1,000  pounds  .  223  78 

Hay — Harvesting  and  baling  8  tons  timothy .  284  92 

Oats — 160  bushels  .  266  28 

Potatoes — 500  bushels  .  247  86 

Rice — 10,000  pounds  rough .  235  64 

Rye — 100  bushels  .  251  100 

Strawberries — 500  quarts  . 216  84 

Sweet  potatoes — 50  bushels .  151  58 

Tomatoes — 100  bushels  .  216  89 

Wheat — 50  bushels  .  160  7 

Mining. 

Coal — 50  tons  bituminous  . 171  94 

Transportation,  Etc. 

Loading  grain — Transferring  6,000  bushels  wheat  from 

storage  bins  or  elevators  to  vessel .  222  63 

Loading  ore — Loading  100  tons  iron  ore  on  cars .  200  2 

Unloading  coal — Transferring  200  tons  from  canal 

boats  to  bins  400  feet  distant .  240  20 

Unloading  cotton — Transfering  200  bales  from  vessel 

to  dock  . 240  75 

4.  Exploitation  of  Labor. 

(a)  THE  DIFFICULTY  OF  SECURING  RELIABLE  IN¬ 
FORMATION-GOVERNMENT  STATISTICS 
VAGUE  AND  INDEFINITE. 

Government  statistics  are  in  some  respects  an  example  of  the 
fine  art  of  concealing  essential  facts. 

The  government  spends  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  of 
the  people’s  money  in  making  elaborate  investigations  and 
publishing  interminable  tables  of  statistics.  But  when  it  comes 
to  getting  at  the  actual  and  most  essential  facts  with  regard  to 
the  capitalistic  system,  there  is  always  something  lacking.  A 
foot-note  explains  why  just  the  particular  point  you  want  isn’t 
there,  and  warns  you  against  using  the  figures  as  a  basis  for  any 
definite  knowledge. 

In  other  words,  the  ponderous  volumes  of  government 
bulletins  very  often  amount  to  telling  you  millions  of  things 
about  a  thousand  subjects  that  you  care  nothin-g  about,  (but  fail 
to  give  you  the  one  particular  and  essential  thing  that  you  do 
want  to  know. 

A  fine  illustration  of  this  is  the  case  of  the  Thirteenth  Census 
Bulletin  for  1910  on  Manufactures. 

The  one  particular  thing  about  which  the  people  of  these 
United  States  would  like  to  know  more  than  anything  else  is, 
just  what  the  profits  of  these  268,491  establishments  were  in  the 
various  years  reported. 

The  tables  do  not  tell. 

We  might  not  complain  if  we  were  even  able,  in  a  definite 
way,  to  get  at  two  items:  First,  the  actual  cost  of  the  produc¬ 
tion,  and,  second,  the  value  of  the  product  when  sold.  But  even 
this  is  denied  to  us.  There  is  a  long  row  of  eleven  figures  which 


141 


/ 


claims  to  state  “the  value  of  the  products.”  There  is  another 
row  of  eleven  figures  that  are  alleged  to  state  “the  expenses.” 
But  a  foot-note  on  the  preceding  page  warns  us  “Census  data 
did  not  show  the  entire  cost  of  manufacture  and  consequently 
can  not  be  used  to  show  profits.”  Now,  the  ordinary  person 
would  be  inclined  to  ask,  What  is  the  use  of  attempting  to  state 
the  cost  of  manufacture  if  the  cost  of  manufacture  is  not  stated? 
Maybe  the  government  statisticians  will  explain  this  to  us  some 
time  in  the  dim,  distant  future.  Or,  again,  one  would  be  inclined 
to  ask,  What  is  the  use  of  attempting  to  state  the  expenses 
involved  in  the  manufacture  if  the  expenses  are  not  going  to  be 
stated? 

In  one  foot-note  the  bulletin  states,  “Under  ‘expense’  are 
included  all  items  of  expense  incident  to  the  year’s  business, 
except  interest,  whether  oh  bonds  or  other  forms  of  indebted¬ 
ness,  and  allowances  for  depreciation.”  But  in  another  foot¬ 
note  we  are  told  that  the  value  of  the  products  means  their 
selling  value  at  the  factory,  from  which  it  is  evident  that  the 
value  of  the  products  is  not  their  value  at  all,  but  a  sort  of  an 
estimate  of  what  they  are  worth.  How  much  these  goods  were 
sold  for  the  census  bulletin  sayeth  not.  It  does  not  know.  Yet 
that  is  the  one  thing  we  all  would  like  to  know. 

And  not  knowing  this,  the  tables  are  almost  useless.  Use¬ 
less  at  least  upon  the  particular  point  which  is  of  most  concern 
to  the  people  of  this  nation,  namely,  just  how  much  profit  did 
these  268,491  establishments  with  their  $18,453,080,000  make 
during  the  year  of  our  Lord  1910? 

Just  how  much  surplus  profit  did  they  exploit  from  the  labor 
of  6,615,046  working  people  whose  toil  created  the  wealth? 

Just  how  much  of  the  $20,672,052,000  belonged  of  right  to  the 
owners  of  these  ^concerns,  and  how  much  belonged  really  to 
the  workers?  In  short,  how  much  did  they  steal  from  us?  These 
are  the  things  we  rnost  would  like  to  know.  These  are  the 
things  it  is  most  important  we  should  know.  Compared  with 
these,  everything  else  is  unimportant.  But  this  is  the  one  thing 
the  big  government  volumes  decline  to  answer,  perhaps  on 
advice  of  counsel. 

Maybe  there  is  a  nigger  in  the  woodpile. 

However,  there  are  some  things  that  are  told  to  us  in  these 
tables.  We  should  be  thankful  for  the  favors  we  have.  We  will 
make  the  best  use  of  what  they  give  us. 


(b)  THE  MEASURE  OF  EXPLOITATION. 

Based  on  Thirteenth  Census  Bulletin,  1910:  Manufactures. 
The  Laborer  Gets  About  Forty  Per  Cent  of  the  Wealth  He 

Produces. 

On  page  4  of  the  above  census  bulletin  is  given  a  table 
the  principal  matters  of  information  relative  to 
268,491  manufacturing  establishments  in  the  United  States  The 
following  are  taken  from  this  table: 

Number  establishments  .  «fi8 

Persons  engaged  In  manufactures  .  ’  7  b7«’k7« 

Proprietors  and  firm  members .  .  273,26s 

Salaried  employes  . ’.!!!'  740  2itr 

Wage-earners  (average  number) . !!.*!!!’  6  615’05« 

Wais  .  938,675,000 

Materials .  3, 4?7, 038,000 

Value  of  products  . |  | .  2o’672’oK?’nrtn 

Value  added  by  manufacturer  (value  of  products'  20’672’062'000 

less  cost  of  materials) . . .  8,530,261  000 

Deductions  From  the  Above  Table. 

We  note  in  the  above  table  that  the  value  added  by  the 
process  of  manufacture  is  $8,530,261,000.  This  figure  is  arrived 
at  by  subtracting  the  cost  of  materials  from  the  vajue  of  the 


142 

products.  This  latter  figure,  however,  should  be  much  larger 
than  that  given  in  the  table,  for,  as  the  report  states,  the  value 
of  the  products  here  referred  to  means  the  value  of  the  products 
at  the  factory.  It  is  perfectly  clear  that  this  value  is  much  less 
that  the  actual  selling  value  of  the  products.  How  much  less 
it  is  impossible  for  us  to  tell.  On  the  other  hand,  the  miscella¬ 
neous  expenses  should,  some  of  them  perhaps,  be  subtracted 
from  the  gross  product.  And  we  are  informed  by  a*  foot-note 
that  in  the  expense  account  no  provision  has  been  made  for 
depreciation.  But  both  of  these  items,  namely,  the  miscella¬ 
neous  expenses  and  the  depreciation,  would,  if  taken  together, 
be  certainly  far  less  than  the  value  of  the  selling  price  over  the 
factory  value.  It  is  very  likely,  therefore,  that  the  $8,530,261,000 
is,  if  anything,  considerably  less  than  the  actual  value  created 
by  the  workers. 

Assuming  then  that  this  is  true,  we  find  ,by  subtracting  the 
$4,365,631,000  (which  was  the  total  amount  spent  for  services, 
and  including  not  only  the  wages  of  the  common  workers,  but 
$50,000  and  $100,000  salaries  of  the  superintendents)  from  the 
$8,530,261,000,  which  is  the  total  value  that  the  workers  created, 
in  the  manufactures  of ‘the  nation  alone,  the  workers  were  ex¬ 
ploited  that  year  out  of  $4,164,648,000;  in  other  words,  accord¬ 
ing  to  these  figures,  which  are  admittedly  conservative,  and  • 
perhaps  purposely  manipulated  so  as  to  conceal  the  worst  of 
the  truth,  the  workers  received  only  51.17  per  cent  of  the  wealth 
which  their  labor  created.  They  probably  received  very  much 
less.  • 

And  if  we  make  allowances  for  the  big  salaries  of  the  high 
officials,  which  sometimes  reach  as  high  as  $50,000  and  $100,000 
a  year  and  which  therefore  constitute  no  real  part  of  the  expense 
of  operation,  but  are,  in  fact,  merely  so  much.of  a  share  of  the 
profit  or  plunder  of  the  concern,  the  real  portion  that  the  com¬ 
mon  workingman  received  of  the  wealth  yrhich  his  labor  created 
was  much  less  than  the  above  figures  would  indicate.  It  is  quite 
likely  that  the  estimate  made  by  the  National  Socialist  Hand 
Book  No.  1  is  correct  and  that  the  workers  received  but  40.01 
per  cent  of  the  wealth  which  their  labor  created. 

Further  Deductions  from  Census  Table. — The  average  wage 
of  the  workers  in  the  manufactures  was  $518  per  year. 

The  average  production  of  each  person  (wage-earners  and 
salaried  employees  combined)  was  $1,151;  or,  if  we  eliminate 
the  salaried  employees  as  the  national  hand  book  does,  the 
average  production  for  each  person  would  be  as  they  state  it, 
$1,290. 

The  average  income  (wage-earners  and  salaried  employees 
combined)  was  approximately  $589  per  year. 

The  average  wage,  $518  per  year. 

The  average  wealth  produced,  $1,151  per  year. 

The  average  amount  exploited,  $63$  per  year. 

Per  cent  of  wealth  produced  received  by  the  worker,  51.17 
per  cent,  which,  with  the  corrections  pointed  out  above,  would 
undoubtedly,  be  reduced  to  about  40  per  cent. 

The  amount  net  profit  to  the  273,265  proprietors  and  firm 
members  (the  value  of  the  products  less  the  total  expense)  was 
$2,218,972,000,  which  is  over  12  per  cent  on  the  capital  employed, 
or  more  than  $8,120  average  annual  income  to  each. 

Average  annual  wage  to  worker,  $518. 

Average  annual  income  to  owner,.  $8,120. 

(c)  THE  WORKERS’  SHARE. 

Estimated  by  the  National  Socialist  Hand  Book  No.  1,  Based 
on  Census  Bulletins. 

The  above  deductions  are  verified  by  the  authors  of  the  Na¬ 
tional  Handbook,  who  have  also  analyzed  the  census  figures  in 


T 


149 

another  manner  and  arrive  at  about  the  same  figures. 

These  authors  say: 

“The  value  added  to  production  (that  is,  the  value  of  the  prod¬ 
uct,  less  the  cost  of  materials)  averaged  $1,150  for  each  wage- 
earner  in  1904.  It  now  averages  $1,290.  But  the  relative  share 
of  the  worker  in  the  value  of  his  product  is  less  than  it  was  in 
either  1899  or  1904. 

“In  a  previous  article,  based  upon  the  census  of  1905,  we  fixed 
upon  the  percentage  of  47  as  approximately  the  factory  worker’s 
share  in  his  product.  The  figure  is,  of  course,  arbitrary,  since  his 
share  cannot  be  exactly  computed.  For  present  purposes  in  com¬ 
puting  the  worker’s  share,  we  shall  make  no  other  deductions 
from  the  gross  value  of  the  product  than  the  cost  of  materials. 
We  then  have  the  following  comparative  figures. 


Net  Worker’s 

Year.  Wages.  Production.  Share,  Per  Cent. 

1899  .  $426  $1,025  41.6 

1904  .  477  1,150  41.5 

1909  .  518  1,290  40.1 


According  to  this  the  worker  receives  about  40  per  cent  of 
the  wealth  his  labor  creates.  This  is  the  same  proportion 
arrived  at  by  the  study  of  the  preceding  table. 

(d)  HENRY  FORD  PROVES  CORRECTNESS  OF  SO¬ 
CIALIST  POSITION. 

(From  “The  Bombshell  that  Henry  Ford  Fired,”  by  Allen  L. 

Benson,  in  Pearson’s  Magazine,  April,  1914.) 

Average  Wage  of  American  Workingman,  $518;  Ford  Pays 

$1,565. 

Socialists  told  you  that  under  a  just  system  of  industry  even 
the  lowliest  worker  need  not  lack  a  decent  living.  Ford  has 
not  established  a  just  system  of  industry,  even  in  his  own  fac¬ 
tory.  He  is  returning  only  half  of  his  profits.  But  the  lowliest 
man  who  works  for  Ford  receives  not  less  than  $5  a  day.  That 
is  $1,565  a  year.  Ford  is  paying  many  of  his  workingmen  more 
than  $2,000  a  year.  The  average  anniial  wage  of  the  American 
workingman  is  less  than  $500  a  year. 

The  difference  between  what  Ford  is  paying  and  what  the 
others  are  paying  indicates  part  of  the  robbery  that  the  others 
are  practising  upon  their  victims.  It  does  not  represent  all  of 
the  robbery,  because  Ford  is  not  yet  paying  his  employees  what 
they  earn.  Ford’s  employees,  like  all  other  employees,  earn 
all  that  is  produced  in  excess  of  what  is  actually  produced  by 
the  proprietors  themselves.  Most  great  proprietors  produce 
nothing.  Ford  is  an  exception.  He  is  entitled  to  his  just  re¬ 
ward.  But  his  just  reward  is  not  what  he  is  getting.  His  plant 
last  year  produced  $25,000,000  of  profits.  Ford  took  more  than 
half  of  this  sum  and  *his  six  partners  took  the  rest.  No  man 
on  earth  can  earn  $12,000,000  or  $15,000,000  a  year. 

No  man  on  earth  can  wisely  use  so  much  a  year.  Ford 
knows  this  as  well  as  anybody.  The  fact  that  he  has  chosen 
to  surrender  half  of  his  profits  shows  that  he  knows  it.  The 
fact  that  he  has  chosen  to  return  half  of  this  money  to  his 
employees  instead  of  using  it  to  found  libraries  and  endow  col¬ 
leges  shows  that  he  knows  to  whom  it  belongs.  Ford  has  been 
a  workingman  himself.  He  is  not  entirely  blind.  He  knows 
what  it  means  to  work  and  get  only  a  part  of  what  one  earns. 

But  let  us  hurry  along.  We  Socialists  told  you  that  under 
a  just  system  of  industry  even  the  lowliest  workingman  need 
not  lack  a  decent  living.  You  hooted  at  us.  You  said  we  were 
fools.  The  rich  men  said  we  were  crooks.  What  does  Ford 
say?  He  says  he  can  afford  to  pay  and  will  pay  floor  sweepers 
not  less  than  $5  a  day. 

What  do  you  think  of  a  minimum  of  $5  a  day?  You,  Mr. 
Average  American  Workingman,  who  receive  less  than  $500 
a  year,  what  do  you  think  of  $1,565  a  year?  Could  you  live  in 
comparative  decency  on  that?  Would  your  family  feel  a  little 
more  comfortable  than  it  now  feels  on  less  than  $500  a  year? 


144 

How  would  you  like  to  work  for  Ford?  Would  you  accept  a 
job  in  his  factory  if  he  were  to  telegraph  you?  Would  you  sus¬ 
pect  his  money  of  being  counterfeit? 

Then,  why  do  you  always  suspect  Socialist  promises  of  being 
counterfeit?  Can  nothing  but  the  actual  sight  of  money  con¬ 
vince  you?  All  that  Ford  has  told  you  in  terms  of  money  we 
have  told  you  in  words.  We  have  told  you  even  more.  We 
have  told  you  that  you  may  have  all  your  labor  produces  if 
you  but  go  about  it  in  a  sensible  way  to  get  it.  Ford  has  told 
his  employes  they  may  have  half  of  the  additional  $25,000,000  a 
year  that  they  should  get.  When  Ford  promises  to  return  ten 
or  twelve  millions  a  year  you  take  him  exceedingly  seriously. 
If  you  are  near  enough  to  his  factory,  you  crowd  around  the 
gates  and  howl  for  jobs.  You  block  the  streets  until  the  police 
have  to  come  and  chase  you  away.  But  when  Socialists  tell 
you  that  you  could  just  as  well  have  the  whole  $25,000,000  as 
half  of  it,  you  yawn  and  declare  you  believe  you  will  vote  the 
Democratic  ticket  and  keep  the  tariff  down  or  vote  some  other 
ticket  and  put  the  tariff  up. 

But  we  should  ask  too  much  of  Mr.  Ford  if  we  were  to 
require  him  to  pull  us  through  the  crack  which  he  has  made. 
Ford  has  done  enough  for  us.  We  should  now  do  something 
for  ourselves.  He  has  shown  us  that  half  of  his  profits  are 
enough  to  enable  him  to  reduce  daily  hours  from  nine  to  eight 
and  increase  the  pay  of  all  men  more  than  22  years  old  to  $5 
a  day.  We  should  be  able  to  do  the  rest  of  the  problem  our¬ 
selves.  It  is  nothing  but  a  problem  in  mental  arithmetic.  We 
have  only  to  divide  the  remainder  of  Ford’s  annual  profits  by 
the  number  of  his  employes  to  ascertain  how  much  more  Social¬ 
ism  would  increase  wages. 

The  remainder  of  Ford’s  profits  are  $12,500,000. 

The  number  of  his  employes  is  25,000. 

Enough  profits  are  left  to  increase  by  $500  a  year  the  wages 
of  each  man,  woman  and  child  who  works  for  Ford. 

That  would  be  a  little  more  than  $2,000  a  year  for  floor 
sweepers  and  still  more  for  others. 

Yet  common  sense  should  tell  us  that  the  Ford  plant  is  not 
the  only  industry  in  the  United  States  that  is  making  much 
money.  Why  should  the  Ford  plant  be  so  considered?  The 
Ford  plant  makes  nothing  but  automobiles.  Automobiles  are 
not  necessary  to  life.  Most  people  do  not  have  them.  Most 
people  never  will  have  them.  Concerns  that  make  and  sell  what 
everybody  must  have  should  be  much  more  prosperous  than 
a  concern  that  deals  in  what  only  a  few  can  have.  A  great 
railroad  system  should  be  much  more  prosperous  than  an 
automobile  plant.  The  Beef  Trust  should  be  more  prosperous 
than  an  automobile  plant.  The  Woolen  Trust  should  be  more 
prosperous  than  an  automobile  plant.  The  Steel  Trust  should 
be  more  prosperous  than  an  automobile  plant.  Yet  not  one 
of  these  trusts  declared  a  dividend  in  1913  of  1,200  per  cent.  Not 
one  of  these  trusts  has  since  established  a  minimum  wage  of  $5 
a  day  and  reduced  daily  hours  from  nine  to  eight.  Not  one  of 
these  trusts  pays  anything  but  the  lowest  wages  upon  which 
its  employes  will  consent  to  exist.  They  are  all  doing  business 
— feeding,  transporting  and  otherwise  serving  the  American 
people,  but  they  are  all  paying  wages  that  Ford’s  employes 
would  not  look  at,  and  calling  upon  the  police,  if  necessary, 
to  prevent  their  employes  from  using  force  to  get  more. 

The  American  people  are  being  fooled — that’s  all.  The  busi¬ 
ness  buccaneers  of  this  country  are  concealing  their  profits 
behind  watered  stock.  What  Ford  is  doing  all  the  great  busi¬ 
ness  interests  of  the  United  States  could  do  if  they  would. 

The  railroads  could  decrease  freight  and  passenger  rates  and 
increase  wages. 


145 


The  Beef  Trust  could  increase  wages  and  reduce  the  price 
of  meat. 

The  Woolen  Trust  and  the  Steel  Trust  could  sell  their  prod¬ 
ucts  for  less  and  pay  their  employes  more. 

Ford  wages  can  be  duplicated  by  any  trust  that  is  willing  to 
retire  its  watered  stock  and  return  to  its  employes  half  or  more 
of-  the  profit^ 

The  Socialists  believe  so  much  in  our  country  that  they  are 
exceedingly  anxious  to  take  possession  of  it.  They  should  like 
to  place  everybody,  not  merely  on  a  level  with  Mr.  Ford's 
floor  sweepers,  but  up  with  his  $3,000  or  $4,000  a  year  mechan¬ 
ics.  At  present  each  of  Mr.  Ford’s  floor  sweepers  is  annually 
in  receipt  of  an  income  that  is  more  than  three  times  as  great  as 
that  of  the  average  American — and  Mr.  Ford  has  enough  left 
to  pay  a  dividend  of  600  per  cent  upon  his  stock.  Mr.  Ford  and 
his  floor  sweepers  may  be  proud  of  this  fact,  but  how  do  you 
feel  about  it? 

(e)  BIG  WAGES  THAT  COULD  BE  PAID. 

(From  article  by  Allan  L.  Benson,  Pearson’s  Magazine,  June, 

1914.) 

The  game  can  never  again  be  what  it  was  before  Henry  Ford 
spoke.  Ford  told  the  world  that  his  annual  profits  upon  a 
$2,000,000  capitalization  were  $25,000,000.  Ford  told  the  world 
that  he  could  afford  to  pay  even  his  floor  sweepers  a  daily  wage 
of  $5.  Ford  told  the  world  that  his  25,000  employes  need  work 
only  eight  instead  of  nine  hours  a  day. 

Many  big  employers  have  asserted  that  their  enterprises 
could  not  afford  to  pay  as  big  wages  to  their  workers  as  Henry 
Ford  pays  to  his  workers.  On  the  following  pages  you  will 
find  analyses  of  some  big  corporation  reports  which  show  that 
if  these  ^corporations  were  capitalized  like  the  Henry  Ford 
Company  is  capitalized,  they  could  pay  “Henry  Ford”  wages. 
AND,  you  will  see  what  kind  of  wages  could  be  paid  if  these 
great  public  service  utilities  were  publicly  owned  instead  of 
privately  owned,  if  the  service  and  cost  of  service  were  the 
same  as  now  given. 

Bethlehem  Steel  Corporation. 

I  shall  begin  with  the  steel  industry.  I  shall  first  consider 
the  Bethlehem  Steel  Corporation,  a  competitor  of  the  steel  trust, 
and  then  the  steel  trust  itself.  The  Bethlehem  Steel  Corpora¬ 
tion  is  capitalized  at  $30,000,000  and  bonded  for  $31,300,000.  The 
report  for  1913  shows  a  “net  manufacturing  profit”  of  $8,530,708. 
By  what  process  these  figures  were  obtained  is  not  shown.  Cor¬ 
porations  sometimes  juggle  figures  to  make  net  profits  appear 
smaller  than  they  are.  Having  no  facts  with  which  to  question 
these  figures,  we  will  take  them  as  they  are  and  see  what 
became  of  the  money. 

Bondholders  and  noteholders  received  $2,101,183. 

Stockholders  received  $5,122,703. 

To  offset  depreciation  in  plants,  $1,272,270  was  set  aside. 

The  appropriation  for  depreciation  is  a  just  charge  against 
the  wealth  created  in  the  plants.  Workingmen  should  make  good 
the  wear  and  tear  on  the  equipment  they  use.  But  the  $7,223,886 
that  went  to  stockholders  and  bondholders  was  simply  a  pay¬ 
ment  made  by  the  workers  for  the  use  of  the  capitalists’  machin¬ 
ery.  The  capitalists  did  nothing  to  earn  the  money.  They  took 
it  simply  because  their  ownership  of  the  properties  gave  them 
power  to  levy  this  enormous  tribute  upon  the  workers.  If  the 
government,  instead  of  private  capitalists,  had  provided  the 
capital,  the  seven  millions  and  more  that  went  to  those  who  did 
no  work  might  have  gone  to  those  who  did  all  the  work. 


146 


But  that  is  not  all.  Elsewhere  in  the  report  we  find  that 
during  1913  additions  valued  at  $9,490,562  were  made  to  the 
property.  This  fact  was  doubtless  revealed  for  the  gratification 
of  the  stockholders.  The  source  of  the  money  that  was  used 
to  pay  for  the  additions  was  not  revealed.  No  mention  was 
made  in  the  report  of  the  sale  of  bonds.  It  could  not  have 
come  out  of  the  surplus,  because  the  surplus,  at  the  beginning 
of  1913,  amounted  only  to  $1,318,241,  and  was  larger  at  the  end 
of  the  year  than  at  the  beginning.  The  presumption,  therefore, 
is  that  the  nine  millions  and  more  were  taken  from  current 
income. 

We  therefore  have  three  items  aggregating  $16,714,448  that 
represents  deductions  made  from  the  products  of  labor  for  the 
benefit  of  stockholders  and  bondholders.  The  sum  actually 
paid  to  labor,  on  the  other  hand,  amounted  to  $13,993,417. 

The  Bethlehem  Steel  Corporation,  in  1913,  employed  16,593 
men.  The  wages  actually  paid  amounted  to  an  average  annual 
wage  of  $843  for  about  the  hardest  work  to  which  a  human 
being  can  lay  his  hands.  If  the  sixteen  millions  and  more  that 
were  deducted  from  labor’s  products  for  the  benefit  of  stock¬ 
holders  and  bondholders  had  been  divided  among  the  men,  the 
average  wage  would  have  been  $1,840. 

Here  we  have  the  wages  of  Mr.  Ford’s  floor  sweepers  not 
only  equalled  but  exceeded.  The  Bethlehem  Steel  Corporation 
in*1913  could  have  paid  an  average  wage  of  $1,565  and  still  have 
had  a  remainder  of  nearly  $5,000,000.  Instead,  it  paid  an  aver¬ 
age  annual  wage  of  $843,  a  dividend  of  a  little  more  than  27 
per  cent  on  its  common  stock,  5  per  cent  on  its  preferred,  more 
than  $2,000,000  to  bondholders  and  more  than  $9,000,000  for 
additions  to  property. 

United  States  Steel  Corporation. 

We  will  now  proceed  to  look  through  the  books  of  the  United 
States  Steel  Corporation.  The  steel  trust  differs  from  most 
other  corporations  in  this — the  steel  trust  buys  no  raw  ma¬ 
terials.  Its  single  product  is  steel,  which  is  made  of  iron  that 
the  trust  digs  from  the  ground,  transports  in  its  own  ships  from 
the  Lake  Superior  region  to  its  own  smelters,  where  it  is 
reduced  to  pig  iron  with  ooal  mined  by  the  trust.  The  steel 
trust  owns  not  only  iron  mines,  coal  mines  and  steamships, 
but  more  than  a  thousand  miles  of  railroads. 

I  make  this  explanation  because  it  immediately  becomes 
useful,  when  we  learn  that  the  trust’s  gross  sales  last  year 
amounted  to  $518,999,605.  This  means  that  the  trust’s  employes, 
in  1913,  created  wealth  to  the  extent  of  the  sales.  What  became 
of  the  money? 

Rather  let  us  first  ask  what  would  have  become  of  the  money 
if  no  capitalist  had  been  able  to  graft  on  the  workers? 

We  may  well  suppose  that  something  would  have  been  paid 
for  repairs  and  something  set  aside  for  depreciation.  The  steel 
trust  devoted  $52,000,000  to  these  purposes — suppose  we  accept 
the  trust’s  figures. 

With  depreciation  deducted,  we  have  as  a  remainder  $467,- 
000,000.  If  we  deduct  $13,000,000  for  taxes  (which  is  the  amount 
the  steel  trust  paid  last  year)  we  have  $454,000,000. 

If  private  capitalists  did  not  own  the  steel  trust’s  properties 
$454,000,000  would  be  available  for  the  steel  workers.  As  there 
are  228,906  steel  trust  employes,  the  average  ^annual  wage  would 
be  $1,983. 

But  the  grafters,  having  seen  the  steel  trust  first,  the  average 
wage  of  employes  in  1913  was  only  $904.  Only  a  handful  of  the 
steel  trust’s  stockholders  took  any  part  whatever  in  the  produc¬ 
tion  of  steel.  Those  who  took  part  were  well  paid  for  their 
work.  Gentlemen  like  Judge  Gary,  the  executive  head  of  the 


147 


7 

trust,  were  exceedingly  well  paid.  Yet  stockholders  and  bond¬ 
holders  drew  off  more  than  half  of  the  $454,000,000  that  was  left 
after  paying  taxes  and  making  deductions  for  repairs  and  depre¬ 
ciation.  The  workingmen  who  created  all  the  value  (and  this 
includes  everybody  from  Judge  Gary  down)  were  paid  $207,- 
206,176,  while  the  remaining  $247,000,000  went  to  stockholders 
and  bondholders. 

The  steel  trust  is  bonded  for  $627,000,000  and  more  than 
$41,000,000  was  paid  directly  to  bondholders  or  put  into  sinking 
funds  where  capitalists  will  eventually  lay  hands  upon  it. 

The  steel  trust  is  capitalized  at  more  than  $868,000,000  and 
upon  this  stock  almost  $51,000,000  in  dividends  were  paid. 

Money  was  showered  in  every  direction  except  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  the  men  who  made  it.  Forty-two  million  dollars  were 
spent  for  additional  property.  Fifteen  millions  were  appro¬ 
priated  to  make  further  additions  to  property.  More  than 
$15,000,000  were  carried  over  to  the  surplus  account. 

Indeed  the  steel  trust  is  and,  since  it  was  formed,  has  always 
been  a  gold  mine  to  the  men  who  own  it. 

•  Since  the  steel  trust  was  organized,  thirteen  years  ago,  it 
has  created  net  profits  available  for  dividends  amounting  to 
more  than  $913,000,000. 

It  has  extended  its  holdings  by  buying  and  paying  for  more 
than  $466,000,000  worth  of  additional  properties. 

It  has  paid  off  and  retired  more  than  $148,000,000  in  bonds. 

It  has  increased  its  surplus  account  from  $25,000,000  to  more 
than  $151,000,000. 

But  it  has  not  made  a  single  millionaire  among  the  rank  and 
file  of  its  employes.  These  geptlemen  are  still  poor. '  These 
gentlemen  will  always  be  poor.  They  are  working,  on  an  aver¬ 
age,  for  $904  a  year. 

Such  are  the  conditions  in  the  steel  industry.  See  the  figures 
again: 

BETHLEHEM  CO.  PAYS  $843;  COULD  PAY  $1,840. 

U.  S.  STEEL  TRUST  PAYS  $904;  COULD  PAY  $1,983. 

Electric  Railways. 

If  we  turn  to  the  electric  railways  (street  and  suburban)  we 
shall  see  the  same  exploitation  that  we  have  ‘seen  in  the  steel 
industry.  Fortunately  for  our  purpose,  the  United  States  Cen¬ 
sus  Bureau  has  recently  made  a  most  interesting  survey  of  all 
the  electric  railways  in  the  country,  of  which  there  are  975. 
The  extent  of  the  business  may  be  realized  when  it  is  stated 
that  the  income  of  the  railways  is  greater  than  that  of  the  steel 
trust.  The  steel  trust’s  income  .in  1913  was  $518,999,605.  The 
income  of  the  electric  railways  for  1912  (the  year  covered  by 
the  government’s  report)  was  $585,930,517. 

Examination  of  the  electric  railway  figures  discloses  the  same 
blood-letting  process  by  which  the  employes  of  the  steel  trust 
are  made  pale.  The  sum  paid  to  the  282,461  employes  was  only 
approximately  $225,000,000.  Fuel  cost  about  a  hundred  million. 

Fifty  million  more  might  justly  have  been  set  aside  for 
repairs  and  depreciation,  while  an  additional  $25,000,000  should 
have  covered  taxes  and  administrative  expenses. 

The  remaining  $186,000,000  (had  it  not  been  for  the  owner¬ 
ship  of  the  lines  by  private  capitalists)  would  naturally  have 
gone  to  the  employes,  increasing  their  average  annual  income 
from  approximately  $800  to  about  $1,460  a  year. 

The  American  Telephone  and  Telegraph  Company. 

The  American  Telephone  &  Telegraph  Company,  which 
operates  the  Bell  telephone  systems  throughout  the  United 
States,  gives  women  an  opportunity  to  pay  some  of  the  price 
that  must  be  paid  to  support  private  ownership  of  industrial 


148 


machinery.  The  rapidity  with  which  this  company  has  ex¬ 
tended  its  business  is  almost  without  parallel  in  the  business 
history  of  the  country.  Ten  years  ago  the  company  operated 
only  2,000,000  telephones.  On  January  1,  1914,  it  operated 
8,133,017.  Sinpe  1904  more  than  $500,000,000  has  been  added  to 
the  properties  of  the  company. 

Many  of  the  dompany’s  employes  are  girls.  These  girls 
helped  to  bring  in,  in  1913,  $215,600,000.  Operating  expenses 
amounted  to  $^5,400,000.  In  the  company’s  report  for  1913  it  is 
not  explained  what  part  of  the  operating  expenses  were  for 
wages  and  what  parts  were  for  other  charges.  If  all  of  the 
operating  expenses  had  been  paid  as  wages,  the  company’s 
156,928  employes  would  have  received  an  average  annual  wage 
of  $474. 

Stockholders,  bondholders  and  other  gentlemen  who  did  not 
help  the  girls  received  $58,700,000.  If  the  public  had  owned  the 
telephone  system  and  the  same  rates  had  been  charged,  the 
annual  wage  of  each  employe  could  have  been  increased  $375, 
which  would  have  increased  the  annual  average  from  $474  to 
$849. 

The  average  weekly  wage  paid  by  the  American  Telephone  & 
Telegraph  Company  is  now  only  $9.  This  wage  could  be  in¬ 
creased  to  $16  if  the  stockholders  and  bondholders  were  out 
of  the  way. 

(e)  EXPLOITATION  IN  MINES,  1899  AND  1902. 

(Special  Census  Report,  “Mines  and  Quarries”  [1902],  page  6.) 

1889.  1902. 

Number  of  mines  or  quarries .  59,204  151,618 

Number  of  operators  .  .  46,858 

Capital  . $1,287,709,840  Not  reported 

Salaried  officials,  clerks,  etc. — 

Number  .  6,120  38,128 

Salaries  .  $4,724,392  $39,020,552 

Wage-earners — 

Average  number .  523,710  581,728 

Total  wages  . $  212,646,848*  $369,959,960 

Contract  work  .  6,719,531  20,677,938 

Miscellaneous  expenses  .  30,236,132  71,771,718 

Cost  of  supplies  and  materials .  74,288,181  123,814,967 

Value  of  products .  410,760,770  796,826,417 

Comment:  The  average  wages  of  wage-earners  were  $648 

(1902).  The  value  added  by  manufacture  (value  of  finished  prod¬ 
uct  minus  cost  of  supplies  and  materials  and  miscellaneous  ex¬ 
penses)  was  $601,239,537,  of  which  labor  (wages  and  salaries 

combined)  received  $408,980,512. 

•Includes  foremen  and  their  wages. 

5.  Wages  and  the  Cost  of  Living. 

(a)  THE  WORKINGMAN’S  BUDGET. 

Average  expenditures  of  2,567  workingmen’s  families  for 

each  of  the  principal  items  entering  into  cost  of  living  and  per 
cent  of  average  total  expenditure,  1901. 

(From  Eighteenth  Annual  Report  of  the  United  States  Com¬ 
missioner  of  Labor,  p.  648.) 

Expenditure  based 
on  all  families. 


Item  of  expenditure. 

Food  . 

Per  cent,  of 
total  expendi- 
Average.  ture. 

. $326.90  42.54 

.  99.49 

12.95 

. - 

Mortgage: 

Principal  . . 

.  *8.15 

1.06 

Tnfprp^t  .  .  .  .  . . .  , 

.  t3.98 

.52 

TTn  ol  .................. 

.  32.23 

4.19 

T.lp-htine" 

.  8.15 

1.06 

XJlgll  uug  . . . 

Clothing: 

TTiiQhpnd  .  .  .  .  . . . 

.  33.73 

4.39 

■Wife  . 

.  26.03 

3.39 

Philrtrpn  . 

.  48.08 

6.25 

.  5.79 

.75 

Insurance: 

.  1.53 

.20 

Life  . 

.  19.44 

2.53 

Organizations: 

.50 

.  5.18 

.67 

149 


Expenditure  based 
on  all  families. 

Per  cent  of 
to  tal  expin  di¬ 
item  of  expenditure.  Average.  ture. 

Religious  purposes  .  7.62  .99 

Charity  .  2.39  .31 

Furniture  and  utensils  .  26.31  3.42 

Books  and  newspapers .  8.36  1.09 

Amusements  and  vacations  .  12.28  1.60 

Intoxicating  liquors  .  12.44  1.62 

Tobacco  .  10.93  1.42 

Sickness  and  death  . 20.64  2.67 

Other  purposes .  45.13  5.87 

Total  . $768.54  100.00 

•Including  interest  paid  by  thirteen  families. 

tNot  including  interest  paid  by  thirteen  families,  included  ia 

Tincipal. 

(b)  WHAT  IS  A  LIVING  WAGE? 

Cost  of  the  various  items  entering  into  a  normal  standard  of 
iving  in  various  localities,  for  a  family  consisting  of  a  man, 
vife  and  a  girl  of  ten,  a  boy  of  six  and  a  boy  of  four. 

'From  “Financing  the  Wage  Earner’s  Family,”  by  Scott  Near¬ 
ing,  University  of  Pennsylvania.) 

Georgia  and 


J’ood  . 

lousing . 

Clothing  . 

ETuel  and  light . 

"’flrfarp  . 

Manhattan 

Island 

.  113.00 

.  41.00 

.  16.00 

Fall 

River 

$313.00 

131.00 

136.80 

42.75 

North 

Carolina 

$289.00 

44.81 

113.00 

49.16 

Home¬ 

stead. 

$445.00 

200.00 

175.00 

46.80 

Health  . 

.  22.00 

11.65 

16.40 

30.00 

nsuran^e  , ,  1 1 1 . . . . 

.  18.00 

18.25 

18.25 

95.00 

Sundry  items  . 

.  74.00 

90.90 

78.25, 

298.41 

Total . 

. $811.00 

$745.35 

$708.87 

$1,290.87 

It  may,  therefore,  be  stated  by  way  of  a  general  conclusion 
that  the  available  data  indicate,  that  a  jnan,  wife  and  three  chil¬ 
dren  under  fourteen  cannot  maintain  a  fair  standard  of  living  in 
the  industrial  towns  of  eastern  United  States  on  an  amount  less 
than  $700  a  year  in  the  southern,  and  $750  a  year  in  the  northern 
states.  In  the  large  cities,  where  rents  are  higher,  this  amount 
must  be  increased  by  at  least  $100. 

In  every  city  as  well  as  in  every  town  and  hamlet  there  is 
a.  minimum  of  economic  goods  necessary  for  subsistence  and 
for  efficiency,  and  hence  there  is  a  minimum  cost  for  such  items. 
Below  the  minimum  of  efficiency  lies  insufficient  education, 
absence  of  decency  and  privacy,  ill-ventilated  rooms,  unhand¬ 
some  clothing  and  food  ill-adapted  for  nutrition.  Below  the 
standard#  of  subsistence  lies  family  dissolution,  misery,  want, 
starvation,  disease  and  death.  These  inevitable  things,  follow¬ 
ing  as  night  follows  day,  present  themselves  to  the  conscious¬ 
ness  of  the  thinking  wage  earner  who  looks  toward  the  future. 

(c)  DO  AMERICAN  WORKINGMEN  OBTAIN  A  LIVING 

WAGE? 

(From  “Wages  in  the  United  States,  1908-1910,”  by  Scott  Near¬ 
ing,  page  214.  Published  by  the  Macmillan  Company.) 

For  the  available  sources  of  statistics,  and  by  inference  for 
neighboring  localities,  the  annual  earnings  (unemployment  of  20 
per  cent  deducted)  of  adult  males  and  females  employed  east  of 
the  Rockies  and  north  of  the  Mason  and  Dixon  line  are  distrib¬ 
uted  over  the  wage  scale  thus: 


Annual  earnings. 

Under  $200  . 

Under  325  . 

TTndpr  Fiftft  _ _ 

Adult  males. 

:::::::::  4° 

Adult  females. 

}'f 

Under 

Under 

600  . 

800  . 

.  % 

.  v1w 

»/Z 

150 


Three-quarters  of  the  adult  males  and  nineteen-twentieths  oi 
the  adult  females  actually  earn  less  than  $600  a  year. 

Even  where  wife  and  children  join  in  wage  earning,  the  situ¬ 
ation  is  not  greatly  improved,  first,  because  from  “four  to  five 
tenth's  of  the  industrial  families  of  the  United  States  are  entirely 
pupported  by  the  earnings  of  the  father-husband. 

(From  “A  giving  Wage/’  by  John  T.  Ryan,  Professor  of 
Ethics  and  Economics  in  the  Catholic  Seminary  at 
St.  Paul,  Minn.) 


To  sum  up,  sufficient  data  have  been  presented  to  justly  the 
conclusion,  that  the  proportion  of  adult  male  wage  earner* 
(outside  of  agriculture,  where  the  remuneration  is  much  lowei 
but  the  cost  of  living  not  so  high)  obtaining  less  than  $600  pei 
year  is  at  least  60  per  cent.  .  .  .  Two  million  men  in  the 

United  States  do  not  get  a  wage  sufficient  to  supply  theii 
normal  physical  wants.  They  are  on  a  physical  level  belov 
that  of  a  well  kept  horse  or  cow. 


(d)  AN  INTERESTING  COMPARISON. 


Average 

Worker. 

President. 

Rockefeller. 

Year  . 

$75,000.00 

$100,000,000.00 

Month  . 

6,000.00 

8,333,000.00 

Week  . 

8.54 

1,500.00 

2,165,000.00 

Day  . 

.  1.42 

249.00 

350,000.00 

Hour . 

. 14 

24.75 

,  35,000.00 

Minute . 

.  .00% 

.40% 

583.00 

Second  . 

.00% 

9.72 

(e)  EARNINGS  OF  WAGE  WORKERS  IN  MANUFAC 
TURES,  1909. 


(Statistics  from  Thirteenth  Census  Reports,  1910,  Vol.  VIII.) 

No.  of  establishments .  n  268,49 

Capital  . $18, 428, 269, 90c 

Salaried  employes  . £90,26 

Salaries  aggregate  . 5 

Under  16  years  of  age .  _ 

Wages,  aggregate  . ? 

Average  wage  . 

°PMt&iesXPen.Sf.S.: . U2,14|,7|0,87 

Value  of  product  . 

Value  added  by  manufacture .  8,529,260,99' 

Percentage  of  increase  in  ten  years,  1899-1909: 

Number  of  establishments  .  29. 

Number  of  wage  earners  .  40. 

Wages,  aggregate  . 

Value  of  product  . 

Value  added  by  manufacturer .  7b* 


(f) 


WAGES  OF  WOOLEN  OPERATIVES). 


The  following  table  is  prepared  from  the  data  given  or. 
page  997  of  the  Report  of  the  Tariff  Board  on  Schedule  F 
(December  21,  1911).  It  covers  the  wage  figures  for  30,45^ 
workers  (exclusive  of  weavers)  in  174  woolen  mills,  comprising 
more  than  two-thirds  of  the  productive  capacity  of  the  country 
The  cumulative  number  shows  the  total  number  of  workers 
receiving  less  than  the  specified  amount.  The  wages  are  com 
puted  for  a  54-hour  week: 


Wages. 

T  aoo  thon  JQ  91  . 

Number. 

.  99 

Cumulative. 

Number. 

L/6SS  LIlcLIl  ••••••*•• 

.  3,383 

3,482 

.  12,160 

15,642 

T  Acia  $0  7  2  . . 

. .  7,561 

23,203 

.  4,286 

27,489 

.  2,472 

29,961 

T  /%««  fVton  $99  1A  .  . . 

.  400 

30,361 

I_j0SS  Tllclll  f  . . 

151 


Weavers’  Wages. 

From  page  1007  of  the  same  volume  the  following  table, 
iving  the  wages  of  skilled  weavers,  is  prepared: 


Less 

Less 

Less 


Wages, 
than  $5.94. 
than  $7.02, 


$8.10. 

$9.18, 


than 
Less  than 
Less  than  $10.80. 
Less  than  $11.88, 
Less  than  $12.96, 
Less  than  $14.04, 
than  $15.12. 


Less 
Less 
Less 
Less  than  $18.90. 
More  than  $18.90, 


than  $16.20. 
than  $17.28. 


Cumulative 

nber. 

Number. 

65 

217 

282 

341 

623 

424 

1,047 

748 

1,795 

438 

2,233 

414 

2,647 

235 

2,882 

150 

3,032 

108 

3,140 

34 

3,174 

6 

3,180 

Total  .  3>182 

(g)  PAY  OF  RAILWAYMEN. 

The  most  reliable  body  of  statistics  in  America,  regarding 
vage  earners,  is  to  be  found  in  the  annual  reports  of  the  Inter¬ 
state  Commerce  Commission.  Below  is  a  table  from  that 
source,  which  shows  what  railway  men  received  per  day  in 
l892,  1901  and  1910.  Commodity  prices  have  risen  about  40 
Der  cent  since  1892.  The  salaries  of  railway  officers  have  ad¬ 
vanced  70  per  cent,  but  the  wages  of  the  workmen  have  risen 
jnly  slightly.  Switch  tenders,  in  fact,  receive  less  today  than 
:hey  did  twenty  years  ago.  Enginemen,  the  aristocrats  of  that 
ndustry,  receive  only  23  per  cent  more  than  they  received  in 
1892.  During  that  period  the  railroads  have  coined  billions  of 
dollars  for  their  stockholders.  The  table  follows: 

Class. 

General  officers  . 

Other  offices  .  9 

General  office  clerks  . 

Station  agents  . 

Other  station  men  . 

Enginemen  . 

Firemen  . 

Conductors  . 

Other  trainmen  .  £• 

Machinists  . 

Carpenters  . * . . . . 

Other  shopmen  .  f* 

Section  foremen  .  A* 

Switch  tenders,  crossing  tenders,  watchmen. . 

Employes— floating  equipment  . . . 

All  other  employes  (mostly  laborers) .  l. 

•Not  reported. 

(h)  WAGES  IN  MINES  AND  QUARRIES. 

(From  the  Thirteenth  Census  of  United  States,  “Mines  and 
Quarries,”  1910,  page  21.) 

Mines  and  quarries,  number . 

Petroleum  and  gas  wells . 

Operators  . 

Salaried  employes  . 

Salaries  . , . •. . 

Number  performing  manual  labor  in  connection 

with  mines,  quarries  and  wells . 

Wage  earners  . 

Wages  . 

capita*6  .w.age. . ! ! '. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! '.  1 ’. *. ! '. ! ! ! ! ! ' ! ! ! ! ! !/. ! ! ’. !  $3,362,527,064.00 

Operating  Expenses •  .  t  un  sqr  no 

Supplies  and  materials . $  260,110,898.00 

Royalties  and  rent .  SHon 

Value  of  products .  1,238,410,322.00 

(i)  SALARIES  AND  WAGES  IN  THE  FISHERIES. 

Business  for  1908. 

(Special  Census  Report,  “Fisheries  of  the  United  States,”  p.  14.) 

Total  persons  employed  . 

Proprietors  and  Independent  fishermen... .  7 

Salaried  employes  . 


1892 

1901 

1910 

$7.93 

$10.97 

$13.27 

.... 

5.56 

6.22 

2.23 

2.19 

2.40 

1.82 

1.77 

2.12 

1.68 

1.59 

1.84 

3.68 

3.78 

4.55 

2.08 

2.16 

2.74 

3.08 

3.17 

3.91 

1.90 

2.00 

2.69 

2.29 

2.32 

3.08 

2.08 

2.06 

2.51 

1.72 

1.75 

2.18 

1.76 

1.71 

1.99 

1.22 

1.23 

1.47 

1.80 

1.74 

1.69 

1.92 

1.98 

2.33 

2.03 

1.97 

2.22 

1.68 

1.69 

2.01 

27,240 

166,448 

23,664 

46,475 

$55,878,478.00 

10,299 
1,086,782 
$599,705,989.00 
$551.82 


152 


\  l 


Wage-earners  .  71,501 

Total  salaries  and  wages . $16,377,00<i 

Salaries  .  319,000 

Wages  . . *16, 058,000 

•Includes  provisions  furnished  to  the  value  of  $1,803,000. 

The  average  wage  in  this  industry  was  $224.44  per  year. 


(j)  HOW  MUCH  DOES  THE  FARMER  GET? 

/  (Fitofri.  the  Rural  New  Yorker,  August  23,  1913.) 

“The  facts  indicate  that  on  the  whole  the  income  of  farmer 
in  this  country,  even  when  we  include  as  a  part  of  the  income 
those  things  consumed  on  the  farm  where  they  are  produced,  is 
certainly  not  more  than  sufficient  to  pay  five  per  cent  on  the 
investment  and  ordinary  farm  wages  for  the  labor  they  do,  and 
it  is  probably  considerably  less  than  this.” 

Who  makes  any  such  statement  as  this?  Some  radical  critic 
of  agricultural  education?  Some  35-cent  dollar  crank?  Some 
“mossback”  farmer,  or  some  “combative”  farmer?  N-o;  it  come 
from  the  highest  authority — the  United  States  Department  oi 
Agriculture.  Professor  W.  J.  Spillman  has  compiled  figures  tc 
show  the  farmer’s  income.  Here  is  what  he  calls  the  labor 
income  of  United  States  farmers: 


Total 

6,361,502 

478,451,750 

$40,991,449,090 

6,325,451,528 


Amoun 
per  farm 
138.1  acres 
75.2  acres 

$6,443.67 

994.33 


Item. 

Number  of  farms . 

Improved  land — acres  . 

Total  farm  investment  . 

Investment  in  farm  buildings . 

Investment  in  implements  and  -  ma¬ 
chinery .  1,265,149,783  198.88 

We  will  ask  you  first  to  consider  whether  the  figures  as 
applied  to  your  farm  are  above  or  below  these  averages.  If 
your  figures  are  above,  remember  that  others  must  be  below 
The  year’s  receipts  are  figured  in  this  way: 

Dairy  products  (excluding  milk  and  cream 

used  at  home)  . . . 

Wool  . 

Mohair  . 

Eggs  produced  . 

Poultry  raised  . . 

Honey  and  wax  . 

Domestic  animals  sold . 


Total  value  of  all  crops . $5,487,161,223 

Net  value  of  crops  fed .  2,260,461,267 


$  596,413,463 

$  93.76 

65,472,328 

10.29 

901,597 

.14 

306,688,960 

48.21 

202,506,272 

31.88 

5,992,083 

.94 

1,562,936,694 

245.69 

270,238,793 

42.48 

3,226,699,956 

507,22 

$6,237,850,146 

$980.56 

Remember  right  here  that  while  the  year’s  crops  are  said 
to"  be  worth  to  the  farmer  a  little  over  $6,000,000,000,  they  cost 
over  $16,000,000,000  when  finally  bought  by  the  consumer,  which 
gives  the  farmer  about  a  37-cent  dollar.  Handling  these  big 
figures  as  we  would  smaller  ones,  we  have  the  following: 

EXPENSES. 


Maintenance  of  implements  and 

(20%)  . 

Taxes  (0.6%)  . 


Miscellaneous  expenses  (15%  of 


SUMMARY. 


Net  farm  Income. 

Interest  on  Investment  (at  5%) . 


Labor  Income. 

Interest  on  mortgage  ($1,715  at  6%).... 
Available  for  purchase  of  live  stock  and  for 
family  living  . . 


.$  651,611,287 
.  114,882,541 

.  299,839,857 

316,272,576 

$102.43 

18.06 

47.13 

49.72 

7 

.  253,029,956 

245,948,694 

39.78 

38.66 

.$1,881,584,911 

$295.78 

282,237,736 

44.37 

,$2,163,822,647 

$340.15 

$6,237,850,146 

2.163,822,647 

$980.65 

340.15 

$4,074,027,499 

$640.40 

2,049,572,454 

322.18 

$2,024,455,045 

$318.22 

102.96 

537.50 

153 

Thus,  on' the  average  mortgaged  farm,  the  farmer  has  $537.50 
or  his  living  expenses  and  for  purchasing  livestock  or  needed 
ools.  This  is  presuming  that  the  farm  income  is  all  in  cash, 
vhile  we  all  know  that  many  farmers  dispose  of  much  of  their 
:rop  in  trade,  in  some  cases  paying  double  prices  by  so  doing, 
fhese  figures  do  not  include  the  value  of  milk  and  cream  used 
jy  the  farm  family,  or  the  money  obtained  from  working  for 
)thers. 

(From  Census  Report,  Vol.  V.) 

Farms  with  income  under  $250,  30.9  per  cent,  or  1,714,296, 
)Ver  $250  and  under  $500,  27.9  per  cent,  or  1,602,854;  over  $500 
md  under  $1,000,  24  per  cent,  or  1,378,944;  over  $1,000  and  under 
£2,500,  14.5  per  cent,  or  829,443;  over  $2,500,  2.7  per  cent,  or 
154,120. 

6.  The  Increase  in  the  Cost  of  Living. 

(a)  RELATIVE  RETAIL  PRICES  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL 
ARTICLES  OF  FOOD  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES, 

1890  TO  AUGUST,  1913,  BY  ARTICLES. 

(From  Bulletin  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics.) 

[Average  price  for  1890-1899=100.0.  The  relative  prices 
shown  in  this  report  for  1890  to  1907  do  not  exactly  agree  with 
those  shown  in  Bulletin  No.  77  for  the  reason  that  a  smaller 
number  of  cities  are  included.] 


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155 


Year.  Food 

1197 .  87.7 

1898  .  94.4 

1899  .  98.3 

1900  . 104.2 

1901  . 105.9 

1902  . ..111.3 

1903  . 107.1 

1904  . 107.2 

1905  . 108.7 

1906  . 112.6 

1907  . H7.8 

1908  . 120.6 

1909  . 124.7 

1910  . 128.7 

The  above  figures  show  an 


(b)  INCREASE  IN  THE  COST  OF  FOOD  AND  OTHER 

COMMODITIES. 

(From  National  Socialist  Handbook  No.  2.) 

House  fur-  All  cam* 
Clothing.  nishings.  moditles. 
91.1  89.8  89.7 

93.4  92.0  93.4 

96.7  95.1  101.7 

106.8  106.1  110.6 

101.0  110.9  108.5 

102  112.2  112.9 

106.6  113.0  113.6 

109.8  111.7  113.0 

112  109.1  116.9 

120  111.0  122.6 

126.7  118.5  129.6" 

116.9  114.0  122.8 

119.6  111.7  126.5 

123.7  111.6  181.6 

increase  of  46.7  per  cent  in  the 

_ _  and  1910.  The 

fndexSfigures  computed^  by  Bradstreet’s  show  $5.9124  for  1896  and 
$9  5050  for  January  1,  1913,  an  increase  in  seventeen  years  of 
$3!0934,  or  60.8  per  cent. 

(c)  PER  CENT  OF  INCREASE  OR  DECREASE  IN  RE¬ 
TAIL  PRICES  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL  ARTICLES  OF 

FOOD— PRICE  ON  JULY  15  AND  AUGUST  15, 1913, 
COMPARED  WITH  THE  AVERAGE  PRICE 
FOR  THE  10-YEAR  PERIOD  1890  TO  1899, 

BY  ARTICLES. 

(From  Bulletin  of  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  No.  136,  p.  7.) 
Article.  Price  July  15,  1913—  Price  Aug.  15,  1913- 
Higher  Lower  Higher  Lower 

than  than  than  than 

10-year  10-year  10-year  10-year 

period  period  period  period 

1890-1899.  1890-1899.1890-1899.  1890-1899. 
Per  cent.  Per  cent.  Per  cent.  Per  cent. 
79.0 


Sirloin  steak  . 

Round  steak  . 

Rib  roast  . 

Pork  chops  . 

Bacon,  smoked . 

Ham,  smoked  . 

Lard,  pure  . 

Hens  . 

Flour,  wheat  . 

Eggs,  strictly  fresh.. 

Butter,  creamery - 

Corn  meal  . 

Potatoes,  Irish  . 

Sugar,  granulated. . . 
Milk,  fresh 


107.3 
75.9 

120.4 

135.5 

89.6 

67.7 
75.6 

28.8 
49.4 
39.8 

57.7 

74.2 

38.3 


79.3 

108.4 

76.5 

124.5 

138.0 

92.2 

69.8 

73.2 

27.9 

60.0 

66.4 

41.9 

75.2 

'  4.8 

38.8 

*2, 

(d)  RETAIL  PRICES  IN  A  TYPICAL  STORE  IN  SPRING, 
1910,  AND  SPRING,  1900, 

(From  Senate  Document  No.  847,  Vol.  I,  page  41.) 

•  Increase  in 

spring,  1910, 
over  spring, 
1900. 

Am’t  Per  cent 


Article. 


Retail  price 
in  spring. 
Unit.  1910  1900 

Bacon,  Ferris  boneless  strip .  .pound  $  .26  $  .15 

Ham — 

cured . pound 

imported . pound 


$  .11 


Ferris  city, 

Westphalia, 

Flour,  wheat — 

Pillsbury’s  Best . half-barrel 

Washburn’s  Gold  Medal . barrel 

Flour,  rye . barrel 

Butter,  creamery . pound 

Sugar — 

Cut  loaf . pound 

Granulated  . pound 

Coffee,  ground,  mixed  and  roasted 

in  bean —  , 

Maracaibo  . 1  Per  pound  f 

Java  and  Mocha....  I  in  1 
Old  Government  . . . .  f  5-pound  ] 

Mocha  . J  lots  l 

Meal,  corn — 

Yellow . 7-pound  package 

White . 7-pound  package 

.  Eggs — 

Strictly  fresh . dozen 

Ordinary  . dozen 

Lard . 3-pound  pail 

(•No  change.) 


.20 

.15 

.05 

.45 

.38 

.07 

3.85 

2.60 

1.25 

7.45 

4.75 

2.70 

5.85 

4.25 

1.60 

.41 

.28 

.13 

.07 

.05% 

.01  Vs 

.06 

.05% 

.00% 

.18 

.18 

(*) 

.33 

.30 

.03 

.33 

.33 

(*) 

.33 

.24 

.09 

.25 

.16 

.09 

.25 

.16 

.09 

.42 

.18 

.24 

.30 

.16 

.14 

.69 

.33 

.36 

73.3 

33.3 

18.4 

48.1 
56.8 
87.6 

46.4 

19.1 

ll.« 


56.3 

56.3 

133.3 

87.5 

109.1 


7.  Is  the  Advance  in  Wages  Keeping  Pace  with  the  In 
creased  Cost  of  Living? 

(a)  THE  GOVERNMENT’S  OPINION. 

(From  Senate  Document  No.  847,  Vol.  I,  page  52) 
Wages  have  not  advanced  as  rapidly  as  have  prices  am 
practically  all  labor  difficulties  which  have  been  the  subject  o 
mediation  in  the  United  States  during  the  past  two  or  thre 

theaUnlaeVd%taf  “  their,basis  the  advanced  cost  of  living.  I, 

ttevUhave  fn  f'  haVe  abvanced  much  ™°re  rapidly  tha. 

tney  have  in  European  countries,  in  fact  in  snmp 

countries  practically  no  advance  has  been  made  during  the  tel 
years  under  consideration.  cmring  the  tei 

Wages  in  the.  United  States  advanced  in  about  the  sam< 

prfsrseionaSofdl1908riCfe  b  ^  ^  ,°wing  to  the  industrial  de 
pression  of  1908,  following  the  financial  panic  of  the  fall  o 

1907,  wages  dropped  considerably  and  in  1909  hardly  more  thar 
regained  the  high  point  reached  in  1907. 

Wages  at  the  present  time  are  not  on  as  high  a  level  as  arc 
past  ten" 'years  adVanCed  bM  Very  little  duri»S 

(b)  AN  EMPLOYER’S  OPINION 

(From  Senate  Document  No.  847,  Vol.  II,  page  410) 

did  five"  ye^rsTo?  °°  ^  ™  Wages  ‘°day  than  you 

Mr.  Eubank:  Yes,  sir. 

Senator  Smoot:  About  how  much? 

Mr.  Eubank:  I  should  say  25  per  cent  higher. 

weree?ean"ea”°:go?H°W  mUCH  higher  they  *°day  tha"  they 

Mr.  Eubank:  Well,  I  can  not  really  answer  that  question 

havefhCt0n  y'  uWrS  are  higher  than  they  have  been  They 
have  been  gradually  getting  higher  every  year 

Senator  Smoot:  Since  1900? 

Mr.  Eubank:  Yes,  sir. 

Senator  Smoot:  Do  you  think  the  wages  you  pay  have  ad- 

y“Ce,daS  much  Proportion  as  the  prices  of  groceries  and  the 
stufx  that  you  sell? 

Mr  Eubank:  I  do  not  think  they  have,  because  if  I  had  to 
work  for  the  salary  that  some  of  my  clerks  get-and  I  pay  them 

•la?  mo^th— 1 /ouId  not  live  on  it.  At  the  same  time,  $60  is 
right  good  pay  for  a  grocer’s  clefk. 

theye<io?0r  Sm°°t:  You  could  live  on  {t  if  ^ou  lived  the  way 

Mr.  Eubank:  Yes,  sir;  but  they  hardly  live.  I  know  that. 

(c)  THE  DECLINE  IN  STEEL  WAGES. 

(By  John  Moody,  Editor  Moody’s  Magazine.) 

In  his  testimony  recently  before  the  Congressional  Investi¬ 
gating  Committee,  Mr.  Farrell,  president  of  the  United  States 
Steel  Corporation,  furnished  a  table  showing  the  number  of 
employes  of  the  corporation  for  each  year  from  1902  to  1912 
inclusive,  the  total  payroll  for  each  year  and  the  average  annual 
wage  of  each  employe.  According  to  this  table,  the  average 
wage  has  risen  from  $717  in  1902  to  $857  in  1912,  an  increase 
of  about  20  per  cent. 

This  increase  of  20  per  cent  in  nominal  wages  is  really  not 
as  significant  as  Mr.  Farrell  would  have  the  public  believe.  In 
the  total  payroll  of  the  big  corporation  are  included  not  only 
the  wages  paid  to  labor,  but  the  salaries  of  all  officials,  superin¬ 
tendents,  managers,  clerks,  etc.  Thus  the  average  for  each  as 
shown  in  the  table  is  very  much  higher  than  would  be  an  exhibit 


158 


Syrians,  Bohemians,  Japanese,  Corn-Planter  Indians  and  Amer¬ 
icans,  *  *  *  all  these  races  are  in  Pittsburgh  with  one  object 
—to  work.  And  if  work  is  their  object,  it  would  seem  that  they 
get  their  fill  of  it.  Twelve  hours  a  day  is  the  rule  for  most  of 
them,  leaving  them  so  exhausted  that  there  is  no  time  or  in¬ 
clination  for  reading,  recreation,  religion,  or  even  home  life. 
One  man,  after  many  years  of  such  work,  remarked  that  he 
would  have  been  happier  in  the  penitentiary. 

It  was  found  that  as  high  as  50  per  cent  of  all  young  foreign¬ 
ers  who  come  to  Pittsburgh  contract  typhoid  fever  within  two 
years  of  their  arrival.  Employment  agencies,  under  no  adequate 
supervision,  were  discovered  in  some  places  to  be  carrying  on 
an  infamous  business.  In  one  part  of  Homestead,  near  the 
Carnegie  Steel  Works,  it  was  found  that  one  baby  in  every  three 
died  before  seeing  its  second  birthday.  Worst  of  all  is  the 
frightful  toll  of  life  taken  by  accidents.  A  Japanese  veteran  of 
the  recent  war  told  one  of  the  investigators  that  “he  looks  upon 
his  Experience  upon  battlefields  as  quite  commonplace  compared 
with  his  experience^  in  the  steel  mills.”  Over  500  men  are  killed 
every  year  in  the  course  of  their  work,  and  an  unknown  number 
seriously  injured.  The  victims  are  usually  the  pick  of  the  men: 
they  are  the  young  men;  half  of  them  are  native  born;  51  per 
cent  have  families  and  30  per  cent  more  are  single  men  who 
partly  or  wholly  support  their  families.  ' 

The  money  loss  to  Pittsburgh  from  this  destruction  of  the 
workers  is  enormous,  anh  the  city  is  told  that  it  can  well  afford 
to  spend  millions  in  devising  ways  to  stop  it. 

(b)  INDUSTRIAL  ACCIDENTS. 

(Gordon  Thayer  in  Everybody’s  Magazine,  February,  1914.) 

This  is  a  theme  of  blood  and  iron. 

It  deals  with  a  Government  that,  out  of  its  industrial  army 
of  14,000,000  souls,  permits  a  yearly  toll  of  over  36,000  deaths; 
nearly  2,000,000  accidents,  of  which  500,000  are  serious  (more 
than  were  slain  or  wounded  throughout  the  whole  of  the  Russo- 
Japanese  war);  and  3,000,000  cases  of  illness  due  to  controllable 
unsanitary  causes. 

It  lifts  the  cloak  of  virtue  from  the  shoulders  of  those  who — 
representing  a  nation  which  during  the  past  ten  years  has 
matched  a  Spanish  and  Philippine  war-record  of  less  than  6,006 
killed  or  wounded  against  an  industrial  record  of  over  5,000,000 
killed  or  wounded  in  its  “savage  wars  of  peace” — would  teach 
the  ethics  of  humanity  to  our  manufacturing  competitors. 

Shall  we,  who  in  the  last  decade  have  killed  or  injured  875 
men  and  women  bread  winners  for  every  single  victim  of  our 
militarism,  preach  the  sanctity  of  human  life  to  the  Lords  of 
War? 

Every  sixteen  minutes,  with  pitiless  iteration,  somewhere  in 
our  country  a  worker  is  killed  at  his  task. 

This  is  the  more  damning  in  that  it  has  been  proved  unnec¬ 
essary. 


Of  all  the  nations  of  the  earth,  America  is  the  most  wasteful 
of  the  lives  of  its  citizens.  Seventy-five  thousand  of  our  people 
are  killed  each  year  by  accidents,  of  which  number  35,000  are 
workmen  slain  while  engaged  in  their  daily  occupations.  If  we 
add  to  these  figures  the  number  of  the  wounded  and  crippled  in 
industry,  we  shall  find  that  Mr.  Mercer  of  the  Minnesota  Em¬ 
ployers’  Compensation  Commission  is  not  far  wrong  in  claiming 
that  industry  now  kills  and  cripples  more  each  year  than  did 
bullet  and  shrapnel  in  any  year  of  the  Civil  War. — John  Ran¬ 
dolph  Haynes,  M.  D.,  Special  Commissioner  on  Mining  Acci¬ 
dents,  State  of  California. 


Killing  Men  in  the  Steel  Mills. 

(From  Technical  Paper  No.  61,  Department  of  the  Interior,  Bureau  of  Mines,  page  20.) 


160 

Railroad  Accidents. 

Number  of  Employes  Killed  and  Injured,  1891-1913. 
(Gathered  from  the  Annual  Reports  of  the  United  States  Com¬ 
merce  Commission.) 

Employes 

ioq!  Killed.  Injured. 

Jonf  . .  23,422 

. .  *  .  27,667 

. 1,958  31,761 

. 2,210  34,923 

1908  3,358  56,344 

1909  . 2,456  51,804 

1910  3,371  68,546 

1911  . 3,163  46,802 

191f  3,235  50,079 

1913  3,301  57,797 

Railway  Employes  Killed  in  the  United  States  in  Comparison 
With  Other  Countries. 

(From  a  Statement  by  Representative  David  J.  Lewis  in  Senate 
Document  No.  90,  Sixty-second  Congress,  First  Session.) 


1. 

United  States  . 

• 

Number  employes  to 
1  killed.  1  Injured. 

2. 

Canada  . 

118 

3. 

Argentine  . 

> 

258 

4. 

Prussia  . 

485 

6, 

Hungary  . 

496 

6. 

Germany . .  . 

431 

7. 

8. 
9. 

10. 

Denmark  . 

Sweden  . 

France  . 

Switzerland  . 

588 

250 

517 

26 

261 

134 

113 

340 

160 

11. 

12. 

13. 

Russia  . 

United  Kingdom  .  .  . 
Belgium  . . . . 

14. 

15. 

Norway  . 

Austria  . 

The  figures  are  for  annual  casualties,  based  generally  on  five- 
year  averages,  from  1905  to  1909,  inclusive. 

"Railroad  employes  point  to  the  fact  that  every  6  minutes, 
day  and  night,  year  after  year,  one  of  their  number  is  killed  or 
injured.  The  Brotherhood  of  Railway  Trainmen  paid  one  claim 
for  every  67  members  in  the  year  1912.” — W.  G.  Lee,  Head  of 
Brotherhood  of  Railway  Trainmen. 


m 


* 


161 


Metal  Mine  Accidents  in  the  United  States  During  the  Calendar 

Year  1912. 

(From  Technical  Paper  No.  61,  Department  of  the  Interior, 
Bureau  of  Mines,  page  31.) 


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Coal  Mine  Accidents  in  the  United  States,  1896-1912. 
(From  Technical  Paper  No.  48,  Department  of  the  Interior 
Bureau  of  Mines,  page  13.) 


T3 

U  £ 

«  4)  r*' 

^  5 

'd 

d  a> 

O  TJ 

O  O 
o  >> 

rH*0 

o 

o 

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d  ®  ~ 

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ct 

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.  a 

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a  S 

Z  « 

o.73 

bx 

®  s 

hi  <£> 

t/i  +J  g 

s-,  o  0^3  c 

1896 

383,258 

1,089 

2.84 

5.87 

170,000 

1897 

385,846 

975 

2.53 

5.04 

198,000 

1898 

891,841 

1,064 

2.72 

4.98 

201,000 

1899 

396,624 

1,216 

3.07 

4.97 

201,000 

1900 

432,453 

1,492 

3.45 

5.73 

174,000 

1901 

476,655 

1,549 

3.25 

5.37 

186,000 

1902 

510,437 

1,895 

3.71 

6.39 

157,000 

1903 

547,431 

1,752 

3,20 

5.08 

197,000 

1904 

673,373 

2,004 

3.50 

5.91 

169,000 

1905 

615,628 

2,232 

3.63 

5.78 

173,000 

4,40,' 

1906 

631,086 

2,116 

3.36 

5.19 

193,000 

4.80! 

1907 

655,418 

3,197 

4.88 

6.93 

144,000 

5,31 

1908 

672,794 

2,449 

3.64 

6.05 

165,000 

6,77: 

1909 

666,523 

2,668 

4.00 

5.79 

173,000 

7,97: 

1910 

725,030 

2,840 

3.92 

6.66 

177,000 

7,83 

1911 

728,348 

2,719 

3.73 

5.48 

183,000 

1912 

750,000 

2,360 

3.15 

4.29 

233,000 

men  employed  in  those  States  in  which  records  of  fatal  accident 
are  in  existence.  The  figures  are  dirctly  comparable  with  th( 
number  of  men  killed  as  given  in  the  fifth  column  and  are  those  or 
which  the  mortality  rates  are  based.  It  will  be  noted  that  th 
portion  of  the  industry  not  represented  In  the  rates  from  1896  t( 
1909  is  small  and  that  since  1909  the  entire  industry  is  repre 
sen  ted.) 

Metal  Mine  Accidents  in  the  United  States  During  the  Calenda 

Year  1912. 


(From  Technical  Paper  No.  61,  Department  of  the  Interior 
Bureau  of  Mines,  page  74.) 

Comparison  of  the  number  of  men  employed  in  the  metal  mine 
of  the  principal  countries,  showing  the  fatality  rate  per  1,00 


persons  employed,  (a) 

1909 

Number  killed 

Number 

Number 

per  1,000 

Country.  i 

employed. 

killed. 

employed. 

Australasia: 

New  South  Wales. 

.  17,836 

20 

1.12 

New  Zealand . 

7,651 

14 

1.83 

Queensland  . 

.  12,050 

26 

2.16 

Tasmania  (b)  . . . 

6,054 

6 

0.99 

Victoria  . 

.  18,671 

15 

0.80 

Western  Australia 

17.027 

33 

1.94 

Austria  . 

.  19,582 

19 

0.97 

France  . 

.  24,436 

73 

2.99 

Germany  . 

.  93,928 

91 

0.97 

Great  Britain  (c) . 

.  28,437 

40 

1.41 

Greece  . 

8,389 

13 

1.55 

Italy  . 

.  52,648 

69 

1.31 

Japan  . 

.  81,312 

138 

1.70 

Mexico  (d)  . 

.  81,438 

471 

1.78 

Peru  (d)  . 

.  17,580 

21 

1.19 

Portugal  . 

7,858 

11 

1.40 

Russia  . 

282 

.... 

Spain  (e)  . 

121,866 

2.81 

Sweden  (f)  . 

13,238 

IS 

1.21 

Transvaal  . 

192,038 

1,018 

6.30 

United  States  (g)  - 

165,979 

695 

4.19 

(a)  Compiled  from  official  reports. 

coal  mines  an» 

(b)  Figures  for  mines  in  Tasmania  also  cover 

smelting  works.  .  .  .  ....  _ 

(c)  Figures  cover  only  mines  coming  under  the  'Metalliferoui 
Mines  Regulation  Act.” 

(d)  Figures  also  cover  coal  mines. 

(e)  Figures  also  cover  mines  in  which  about  25,000  men  ar 
employed  annually. 

(f)  Figures  also  cover  coal  mines  and  quarries. 

(g)  Figures  for  1911.  .  „  ,  .  ... 

Comparison  of  Number  of  Fatalities  in  Metal  Mines,  Coal  Mint 
and  Quarries  During  the  Year  1912. 

(From  Technical  Paper  No.  61,  Department  of  the  Interior 

Bureau  of  Mines,  page  5.) 

Number  killed. 


Kind  of  mines. 

employed. 

Total. 

Metal  mines  . 

169,199 

661 

Coal  mines  . 

.  .  722,662 

2,360 

Quarries  .  . . 

.  .  113,105 

213 

Total  for  1912.  . .  . 

.  .1,004,966 

3,234 

Total  for  1911.  . .  . 

.  .1,005,281 

3,602 

Number  per 
1,000  employed. 
3.91 
3.27 
1.88 


3.23 

3-88 


163 

Accidents  on  Farms. 

(From  Socialist  Handbook  No.  1.) 

“I  have  looked  around  for  information  and  find  abundant 
jvidence  ifor  believing  that,  relatively,  farm  hazards  are  even 
nore  pronounced  in  American  than  in  European  countries,” 
This  statement  appears  in  the  printed  hearings  before  the  Fed¬ 
eral  Commission  on  Employers’  Liability  and  Workmen’s  Com¬ 
pensation. 

These  figures  show  some  of  the  facts  upon  which  the  above 
s  based:  “Accident  insurance  rates:  Textile  operatives,  rated 
prdinary  or  medium,  $7.50 — $10  per  annum;  machinists,  rated 
nedium  or  special,  $10 — $12.50  per  annum;  carpenters,  rated 
special  or  hazardous,  $12.50 — $15  per  annum.” 

Ten  years’  experience  of  a  large  American  casualty  company 
hows  that  the  average  premiums  of  mill  operatives,  cotton  and 
vool,  was  about  $8  per  year,  while  that  of  the  farmer  was 
.bout  $12.50. 

In  the  course  of  five  years  in  Canada  mine  non-fatal  acci- 
lents  decreased  50  per  cent;  farm  non-fatal  accidents  increased 
7  per  cent. 

Agricultural  teaming  was  responsible  for  10,486  accidents  a 

ear. 

Farmers’  hand  tools  were  responsible  for  4,482  accidents  in 
ne  year. 

Accidents  to  the  number  of  5,718  among  farm  workers  were 
aused  by  cutting,  handling  and  hauling  timber  in  one  year. 

Accidents  to  the  number  of  1,777,  including  17  deaths,  were 
aused  by  feed-cutting  machines  in  one  year. 

Threshing  machines  were  responsible  for  1,296  accidents  in 
ne  year. 


Fatal  Accidents  in  Various  Occupations. 

(The  trades  are  classed  here  according  to  their  danger.) 

No.  for 


Occupation.  Years. 

Railroad  brakemen  . 1900-1902 

Gloucester  fisheripen  ....1892-1900 
R.  R.  switch  and  flagmen  1900-1902 


Persons 
employed. 
10,116 
52,000 
5,717 


every 
No.  1,000 
Killed,  em’p’d. 


150 

692 

41 


15.3 

13.3 

7.2 


7.2 

6.8 

6.7 


Gunpowder  . Estimated  from  correspondence  10.6 

>  Railroad  firemen  . 1900-1902  6,238  46 

»  Railroad  engineers  . 1900-1902  15,621  106 

I  Dynamite  manufacturers.  .Estimated  from  correspondence 

1  Railroad  conductors  . 1900-1902 

)  Anthracite  coal  miners ....  1892-1901 
)  U.  S.  Army,  war  period. ..  1898-1901 
U.  S.  Navy,  war  period. ..  1898-1901 
Bitum.  mine  laborers  (Pa.)  1892-1901 
Anthr.  mine  laborers  (Pa.)  1892-1901 
i  Metal  miners  (Montana)  ..  1893-1902 
»  Drivers  and  runners,  an¬ 
thracite  (Pa.)  . 1892-1901 

!  Lead  &  zinc  miners  (Mo.)  1892-1901 

Metal  miners  (Colo.) . 1896-1901 

Railroad  laborers  . 1900-1902 

1  Copper  miners  (Mich.)  ....1891-1900 
'  Anthr.  fire  bosses  (Pa.) ..  1892-1901 
P’d  firemen  in  Am.  cities ..  1885-1900 
Bituminous  coal  miners ..  1892-1901 

Railroad  trackmen  . 1900-1902 

Railroad  section  foremen ..  1900-1902 
U.  S.  Army,  peace  period ..  1894-1897 
U.  S.  Life-saving  service ..  1876-1902 
U.  S.  Navy,  peace  period ..  1894-1897 

Railway  mail  clerks . 1892-1901 

Elec,  street  r’way  employes  1902 
Policemen  in  Amer.  cities  1885-1900 
Nos.  10  and  11  show  the  men  killed  in  war,  and  war  Is  sup- 
•sed  to  be  a  very  dangerous  occupation.  It  is  considered  so 
.ngerous,  indeed,  that  men  are  pensioned  because  they  must  face 
at  danger.  Yet  we  find  that  three  times  as  many  men  are  killed 
brakemen  on  railroads  as  are  killed  in  war.  We  find  that  mine 
borers  face  every  day  of  their  lives  danger  as  great  as  men  must 
ce  in  battle. 

To  get  legal  protection  for  workingmen  at  Congress  is  well 
gh  impossible,  yet  day  after  day  railroad  men,  fishermen,  mine 
borers  and  others  face  death. — Robert  Hunter. 


5,074 

31 

6.1 

352,807 

1,978 

5.6 

446,221 

2,251 

5.0 

95,434 

464 

4.6 

22,792 

107 

4.7 

245,893 

1,122 

4.6 

101,974 

439 

4.3 

101,231 

379 

3.7 

77,579 

243 

3.3 

201,572 

646 

3.2 

17,668 

51 

2.9 

91,917 

261 

2.8 

10.062 

25 

2.5 

177,954 

447 

2.5 

631,374 

1,383 

2.2 

34,472 

77 

2.2 

5,896 

IS 

2.2 

109,555 

197 

1.8 

43,240 

65 

1.6 

55,641 

67 

1.2 

85,489 

78 

0.9 

140,376 

122 

0.9 

287,447 

209 

0.7 

The  Butcheries  of  Peace. 

(National  Socialist  Handbook  No.  1.) 

Fresh  light  is  thrown  on  the  frightful  list  of  fatal  accident* 
in  modern  industry  by  the  new  Bulletin  109  of  the  Bureau  of 
the  Census.  It  is  entitled  “Mortality  Statistics,  1910,"  and  it 
gives  detailed  data  regarding  deaths  in  the  “registration  area.” 
This  area  is  that  part  of  the  United  States  in  which  the  laws 
requiring  the  registration  of  births  and  deaths  are  sufficiently 
comprehensive  and  rigorous  to  insure  approximately  correct 
figures.  It  consists  of  California,  Colorado,  Connecticut,  Dis¬ 
trict  of  Columbia,  Indiana,  Maine,  Maryland,  Massachusetts, 
Michigan,  Minnesota,  Montana,  New  Hampshire,  New  Jersey, 
New  York,  Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  Rhode  Island,  Utah,  Vermont, 
Washington,  Wisconsin,  the  municipalities  of  1,000  and  more 
population  in  North  Carolina,  and  43  cities  in  non-registration 
states.  It  contained  on  July  1,  1910,  53,843,896  population,  or 
58.3  per  cent  of  the  total  for  the  United  States. 

The  suicides  in  this  area  numbered  8,590;  the  homicides  or 
murders,  3,190.  If  the  remainder  of  the  country  showed  the 
same  percentages,  there  must  have  been  about  14,700  of  the 
former  and  some  5,470  of  the  latter.  It  is  probable,  however, 
that  suicides  were  fewer  than  the  indicated  number  and  homi¬ 
cides  considerably  more. 

But  it  is  to  the  deaths  listed  as  accidents  that  we  turn  for 
the  most  interesting  data.  They  are  classified  by  causes  as  fol¬ 
lows: 

Food  poisoning  .  157 


Other  poisoning  .  !»227 


Fires 


Burns  (fire  excepted)  . 

Suffocation  by  gas  .  J'JJJ 

Drowning  .  ? 

Accidental  shooting  .  1 

Accidental  cutting  . 


Falls 


Mine  and  quarry  accidents . 2,484 

Machine  accidents  .  ninn 

Railroad  accidents  . 

Street  car  accidents  . 

Automobile  accidents  . 

Accidents  from  other  vehicles .  L;™ 


Landslides 


551 


Injuries  by  animals .  5j*2 


Starvation 


Excessive  cold  . . 254 

Effects  of  heat  . 

Lightning  . * .  1**® 

Electricity  (except  lightning)  .  478 

Fractures  (not  specified)  . 

Other  violence  . 3,3ai 


Total  . ...46,416 

The  total  (45,416)  is  startling.  Extended  to  the  entire  coun¬ 
try  it  would  mean  a  yearly  fatal  accident  list  of  about  78,000 
But  15.9  per  cent  of  these  deaths  are  of  children  under  10,  who, 
though  subject  to  certain  industrial  accidents,  take  no  part  in 
industry  themselves.  They  are  victims  of  the  prevailing  sys¬ 
tem,  with  its  reckless  disregard  of  life,  even  if  they  are  not  par¬ 
ticipants  in  it. 

Making  all  possible  deductions  for  infants,  for  the  fact  that 
the  accident  rate  is  probably  less  in  the  nonregistration  area 
than  in  that  given,  and  for  the  further  fact  that  some  part  of 
the  total  of  accidents  is  not  to  be  attributed  to  the  present  in¬ 
dustrial  system,  there  yet  remain  about  50,000  yearly  deaths 
which  are  directly  due  to  private  ownership  of  industry. 

(c)  OCCUPATIONAL  DISEASES. 

(Extracts  from  Poverty,  by  Robert  Hunter,  pages  159-161.) 

There  are  many  well-known  diseases  which  are  recognized 
as  “marks  of  trade.”  Typesetters,  telegraphers,  tailors,  writers, 
etc.,  suffer  frequently  from  muscular  cramps  and  similar  afflic¬ 
tions.  Such  breakdowns  may  at  first  prevent  only  a  free  muscu¬ 
lar  action,  but  they  are  likely  in  the  end  to  result  in  palsy  and 


165 


paralysis  of  the  overused  muscles.  The  latter,  for  instance, 


happens  very  frequently  to  sewing  machine  operatives.  Shop 
girls  are  likely  to  suffer,  as  a  result  of  their  occupation,  from  a 
narrow,  contracted  pelvis.  Varicose  veins  and  ulcers  result 
from  continuous  standing.  Curvature  of  the  spine  results 
almost  inevitably  from  certain  employments.  These  are  but  a 
few  among  many  of  the  physical  ills  which  result  from  certain 
specialized  occupations. 

Even  the  comparatively  slight  afflictions  are  serious  to  the 
workman,  because  he  must  work  or  become  a  pauper.  The 
more  terrible  and  loathsome-  diseases  of  occupation,  which 
utterly  destroy  the  workman’s  health  or  which  cause  death,  are 
too  many  to  mention  in  detail.  Those  diseases  which  result 
from  handling  or  coming  in  contact  with  the  poisonous  materials 
used  in  the  chemical  industries  are  the  ones  most  generally 
known.  Lead  is  a  commonly  used  poison.  A  very  large  num- 
mer  of  workmen  are  employed  in  many  different  industries 
where  they  are  subjected  to  the  dangers  of  lead  poisoning.  The 
early  symptoms  of  the  disease  are  blue  gums,  followed  by  a 
loosening  and  coming  out  of  the  teeth;  but  blindness,  paralysis 
and  death  in  convulsions  finally  result.  Miscarriages,  still-births 
and  convulsions  occur  frequently  to  women  lead  workers  who 
are  with  child.  This  is  one  of  the  worst  so-called  poisonous 
trades.  The  dust-producing  trades  cause  various  respiratory 
diseases,  such  as  miners’  asthma  and  consumption.  Mining, 
street  sweeping  and  file  grinding  are  the  ones  most  generally 
known.  Bakers,  laundresses,  tailors  and  dressmakers  are  also 
subject  to  certain  diseases,  resulting  from  their  work  and  from 
insanitary  conditions,  which  cause  repeated  breakdowns  and  a 
high  death  rate. 


(d)  MORTALITY. 


MORTALITY  TABLE  SHOWING  COMPARATIVE  DEATH  RATE 
FROM  CONSUMPTION  AMONG  THE  DIFFERENT 


OCCUPATIONS. 


(From  the  12th  Census  of  United  States,  Vital  Statistics,  Part  I, 


pp.  cclxii-ccxci.) 


Figures  indicate  number  of  deaths  in  1900  for  every  100,000 
in  the  same  occupation. 


MALES. 


Marble  and  stone  cutters . 

Cigar  makers  and  tobacco  workers.. 

Servants  . 

Bookkeepers,  etc . 

Laborers  (not  agricultural)  . 

Plumbers,  etc . 

Masons  . 

Iron  and  steel  workers . 

Mill  and  factory  operatives  (textile) 

Machinists  . 

Physicians  and  surgeons . 

Lawyers  . 

Clergymen  . 

Farmers  . 


540. 5 

476.0 

430. 5 
291 

170.7 
294 

292.9 
226.2 

207.6 

195.9 

162.8 

139.9 


Bankers,  brokers  and  officials  of  companies 
All  occupied  males  . 


6 


FEMALES. 


Servants  . 

Telegraph  and  telephone  operators  .  . . 

Bookkeepers,  clerks,  etc . 

Mill  and  factory  operatives  (textile) 

Dressmakers  and  seamstresses  . 

School  teachers . . . 

Nurses  and  midwives  . 

Laundresses  . 

All  occupied  females  . 


.219.7 

.205.1 

192 

.144.1 

120.1 

126.1 

100.2 

94.4 

172.1 


(The  figures  represent  the  number  of  deaths  from  consump¬ 
tion  for  every  100,000  population,  of  persons  10  years  of  age  and 

over.) 

NUMBER  OF  DEATHS  FROM  CONSUMPTION  PER  100,000  OF 
POPULATION— BY  OCCUPATION  GROUPS. 

Special  Report  on  Tuberculosis,  Year  1900,  p.  60.) 

Professional  . 122.2 

Clerical  and  official  . 304.2 

Mercantile  and  trading . 165.8 

Public  entertainment  . 268.6 

Personal  service,  police  and  military . 254.8 

Laboring  and  servant  . 376.1 

Manufacturing  and  mechanical  industry . 262.1 

Agriculture,  transportation  and  other  outdoor . 147.2 


166 


Principle  Causes  of  Mortality  in  Various  Occupations. 


(From  Technical  Paper 
Bureau 


No.  48,  Department  of  the  Interior, 
of  Mines,  page  73.) 

Cause  of  Death. 


Occupation. 

Coal  miners  . 

Iron  and  steel  workei 

Machinists  . 

Masons  . 

Painters  . 

Carpenters  . . 

Textile  workers  .  . . 

Clerks  . 

Farmers  . . 

Principal  causes 
(ages  25  to  64). 


3 

r* 

®  £  K 

!>>  m 

>> 

”  »  m 

<D  • 

Hear 

Diseas 

Acci¬ 

dents 

Tuberc 

losis. 

Pneu- 

monia 
and  oth 
respiratf 
disease 

Urinar 

disease 

X 

0> 

ft 

o 

ft 

< 

paralys 
and  oth 
nervou 

disease 

All  oth 
causes 

—Per  cent. — 

.  6.8 

22.9 

11.1 

20.7 

8.0 

7.7 

22. S 

3  8.8 

15.3 

19.4 

12.5 

9.9 

10.0 

24.1 

.  8.7 

10.0 

27.7 

10.4 

10.0 

9.1 

24.1 

.  10.1 

9.0 

17.7 

13.4 

13.0 

10.1 

28.7 

.  8.1 

8.6 

23.8 

9.9 

15.1 

10.7 

23.8 

.  11.4 

7.8 

16.1 

11.1 

13.4 

13.6 

26.6 

.  9.1 

7.0 

28.4 

12.4 

11.5 

9.4 

22.2 

.  7.9 

6.7 

36.7 

10.3 

9.6 

8.1 

20.7 

.  12.7 

5.8 

10.2 

11.9 

12.9 

17.1 

29.4 

of  deaths 

among 

coal  and  metal 

miners 

Cause  of  Death. 


Accidents. 


Occupation. 

Coal  miners  (1907-1910) .  22.92 

Copper  miners  in  ojie  of  the  princi¬ 
pal  copper-producing  states 

(1907-1911)  .  17.06 

Metal  miners  (1911)  .  30.51 


Tuberculosis 

and  All  other 

pneumonia.  causes. 

- Per  cent - 

25.28  51.80 


43.45  39.49 

31.63  37.86 


(e)  UNEMPLOYMENT. 


(From  the  Proceedings  of  the  First  National  Conference  on 
Unemployment,  held  in  New  York,,  February  27-28,  1914, 
under  the  auspices  of  the  American  Association  for  Labor 
Legislation  in  Affiliation  with  American  Section,  Interna¬ 
tional  Association  on  Unemployment.) 

After  investigation  in  New  York  City  during  the  winter  of 
1913-1914,  the  superintendent  of  the  employment  bureau  of  an 
old  and  conservative  organization — the  Association  for  Improv¬ 
ing  the  Condition  of  the  Poor — estimated  on  February,  1914, 
that  “on  any  given  day  this  winter  there  are  at  least  325,000 
men  unemployed  in  this  city."  At  the  same  time  relief  agencies 
in  many  other  cities  were  swamped.  Municipal  lodging  houses 
were  turning  away  many  genuine  seekers  after  work — to  sleep 
on  bare  boards  at  the  docks,  in  warehouses,  even  in  morgues. 

But  while  relief  agencies  struggle  with  their  problems  of 
emergency  relief,  we  do  not  forget  that  serious  irregularity  of 
employment  is  not  temporary  in  America.  It  is  continually  one 
of  our  most  wasteful  industrial  evils. 

The  United  States  Census  for  1900  showed  that 
6,469,964  working  people,  or  nearly  25  per  cent  of  all  engaged  In 
gainful  occupations,  had  been  unemployed  some  time  during 
the  year.  Of  these 

3,177,753  lost  from  one  to  three  months  each,  representing  on 
the  basis  of  $10  a  week  a  loss  In  wages  of  approximately 

$200,000,000; 

2,554,925  lost  from  four  to  six  months’  work  each,  representing  a 
wage  loss  of  approximately  $500,000,000;  and 
736,286  lost  from  seven  to  twelve  months’  work  each,  represent¬ 
ing  a  wage  loss  of  approximately  $300,000,000. 

Thus  approximately  $1,000,000,000  was  lost  in  wages  In  the 
year. 

On  this  subject  the  census  statistics  are  Very  unsatisfactory, 
but  they  are  the  figures  gathered  and  published  at  great  expense 
by  'the  United  States  government.  Similar  data  were  collected 
by  the  government  in  1910,  but  they  are  still  unpublished. 

In  1901  the  federal  Bureau  of  Labor  investigated  24,402 
working  class  families  in  33  states,  and  found  that  12,154  heads 
of  families  had  been  unemployed  for  an  average  period  of  9.43- 
weeks  during  the  year.  The  New  York  State  Department  of 
Labor  collected  reports  each  month  during  the  ten  years  1901- 
1911  from  organized  workmen  averaging  in  number  99,069  each 
month,  and  found  that  the  average  number  unemployed  each 
month  was  14,146,  or  18.1  per  cent. 


167 


The  federal  Census  of  Manufactures  for  1905  gives  the  “av¬ 
erage  number  of  wage  earners  each  month,  and  the  greatest  and 
least  number  employed  at  any  one  time.”  At  one  time  7,017,138 
were  employed,  while  at  another  time  there  were  only  4,599,091, 
leaving  a  difference  of  2,418,047.  That  is  to  say,  nearly  2,500,000 
workers  were  either  unemployed  or  compelled  to  seek  a  new 
employer  during  the  year.  These  figures  were  drawn  from  the 
manufacturers’  own  records. 

Unemployed  in  Various  States. 

The  following  table  was  prepared  by  Mr.  Stoddel  for  the 
Ethical  Social  League  of  New  York  and  printed  in  the  Wash¬ 
ington  Post  of  April  7,  1908. 

According  to'  the  reports  from  our  organizers  and  repre¬ 
sentatives  in  the  various  states,  the  number  of  unemployed  up 

to  date  are: 

Indiana  . 60,000 

Tennessee  .  23,000 

Louisiana  .  47,000 

Alabama  • .  39,000 

Colorado  .  46,500 

Illinois  . 300,000 

Missouri  . .  85,000 

Rhode  Island  .  30,000 

Pennsylvania  . 350, 000 

Michigan  . 135,000 

Delaware  .  30,000 

Virginia  . 42,000 

North  Carolina  . .  36,000 

Georgia  . . 27,0^0 

Oregon  .  51,000 

Idaho  . 26,000 

Wisconsin  . 92,000 

Arkansas  .  21,000 

Total  . 3,160,000 

Proportion  of  Unemployed  in  Various  Occupations. 

(From  the  Census  Volume  on  Occupations.) 


California  .  95,000 

Connecticut  .  55,000 

Massachusetts  .  95,000 

Montana  .  18,000 

New  York  . 750,000 

Ohio  . 200,000 

New  Jersey  .  80,000 

Maryland  .  75,000 

West  Virginia  .  40,000 

South  Carolina  .  30,000 

Florida  .  45,000 

Washington  .  44,000 

Nevada  . 14,000 

Nebraska  .  19,500 

Minnesota  . .  .  43,000 

Arizona  .  12,000 

The  Dakotas  .  26,000 

Kentucky  .  36,000 

Texas  .  40,000 


1900 
No. 

Agricultural  pursuits  . 2,144,689 

Professional  pursuits  .  330,566 

Domestic  personal  pursuits . 1,568,121 

Trade  transportation  pursuits......  500,185 

Manfg  and  mechanical  pursuits ....  1,925,403 


1890 


Pet. 

No. 

Pet. 

20.7 

1,020,205 

11.2 

26.3 

142,574 

15.1 

28.1 

799,272 

18.9 

10.5 

262,871 

7.9 

27.2 

1,298,808 

22.9 

22.3 

3,523,730 

15.1 

of  workers  unem- 

6,468,964 

The  percentages  show  the  proportion 
ployed  to  the  number  usually  employed  in  each  of  the  five 
general  divisions. 

Unemployed,  1900,  by  Duration. 

(From  the  Census  Volume  on  Occupations.) 

4  to  6 
months. 

2,069,546 
485,379 


Males  . 
Females 


1  to  3 
months. 
.2,593,136 
.  584,617 


7  to  12 
months. 
564,790 
171,496 


Total. 

5,227,472 

1,241,492 


_  3,177,753  2,554,925  736,286  6,468,964 

Between  1890  and  1900  there  was  an  increase  of  unemploy¬ 
ment  in  125  out  of  140  general  groups  of  males  and  in  56  out 
of  63  general  groups  of  females. 

Number  of  Unemployed  Wage  Earners  in  Trade  Unions. 

(From  Appeal’s  “Arsenal  of  Facts,”  page  136.) 

Number  Idle  at  end  of 


Jan. .  . . 
Feb. .  .  . 
March  . 
April.  . 
May.  .  . 
June. .  . 
July.  .  . 
August. 
Sept. . . . 
October. 
Nov. .  .  . 
Dec. .  .  . 

Mean 


reporting. 
Unions.  Membs. 


192 

192 

192 

192 

192 

192 

190 

190 

190 

190 

190 

190 


88,604 

89,396 

90,619 

89,039 

89,241 

89,227 

89,551 

90,428 

90,783 

91,247 

91,977 

91,162 


No. 

25,964 

23,727 

20,836 

18,042 

15,228 

15,503 

12,459 

10,799 

13,171 

12,468 

12,206 

18,791 


Lonth. 

r 

- Percentage  idle - 

- ^ 

Pet. 

1908 

1907 

1906 

1905 

1904 

*02-7. 

29.3 

36.9 

21.5 

15.0 

22.5 

25.8 

21.0 

26.5 

37.5 

20.1 

15.3 

19.4 

21.6 

18.8 

23.0 

37.5 

18.3 

11.6 

19.2 

27.1 

18.5 

20.3 

33.9 

10.1 

7.3 

11.8 

17.0 

13.1 

17.1 

32.2 

10.5 

7.0 

8.3 

15.9 

12.7 

17.4 

30.2 

8.1 

6.3 

9.1 

13.7 

12.6 

13.9 

26.8 

8.5 

7.6 

8.0 

14.8 

12.1 

11.9 

24.6 

12.1 

5.8 

7.2 

13.7 

10.2 

14.5 

24.6 

12.3 

6.3 

5.9 

12.0 

8.7 

13.7 

23.1 

18.5 

6.9 

5.6 

10.8 

10.8 

13.3 

21.5 

22.0 

7.6 

6.1 

11.1 

12.9 

20.6 

28.0 

32.7 

15.4 

11.1 

19.6 

20.7 

18.5 

29.7 

16.2 

9.3 

11.2 

16.9 

168 


Conditions  of  Unemployment  in  the  Mining  Industry. 

(Bulletin  No.  109,  Bureau  of  Commerce  and  Labor,  page  28.) 


Years. 

Number  of  days 
active. 

Anthra-  Bitumi- 
cite.  nous. 

Days 

Anthracite. 

Number.  Per  cent. 

Idle. 

Bituminous. 

Number.Per  cent 

1890 . 

..  200 

226 

100 

33.3 

74 

24.7 

1891 . 

. .  203 

223 

97 

32.3 

77 

25.7 

1892 . 

219 

102 

34.0 

81 

27.0 

1893 . 

204 

102 

34.3 

96 

32.0 

1894 . 

171 

110 

36.7 

129 

43.01 

1895 . 

194 

104 

34.7 

106 

35.3 

1896 . 

192 

126 

42.0 

108 

36.0 

1897 . 

.  .  150 

196 

150 

50.0 

104 

*4.7 

1898 . 

.  .  152 

211 

148 

49.3 

89 

29.7 

1899 . 

.  .  173 

234 

127 

42.3* 

66 

22.0 

1900 . 

.  .  166 

234 

134 

44.7 

66 

22.0 

1901 . 

.  .  196 

225 

104 

34.7 

75 

25.0 

1902 . 

.  .  116 

230 

184 

61.3 

70 

22.S 

1903 . . 

.  .  206 

225 

94 

31.3 

75 

25.0 

1904 . 

.  .  200 

202 

100 

33.3 

98 

*2.7 

1905 . 

.  .  215 

211 

85  • 

28.3 

89 

29.7 

1906 . 

213 

105 

35.0 

87 

21.9 

1907 . .  . 

.  .  220  * 

234 

80 

26.7 

66 

12.9 

1908 . 

.  .  200 

193 

100 

33.3 

107 

36.7 

1910 . 

.  .  229 

217 

71 

23.7 

83 

27.7 

Causes  of  Unemployment. 

(From  Eighteenth  Annual  Report,  United  States  Labor  Corn-] 
missioner,  page  296.) 

Establishments  closed,  unable  to  get  work,  and  slack  work.  .  50.64 1 
Sickness 
Vacation 
Bad  weather 
Strike 
Accident 
Not  given 
Drunkenness 

9.  Child  Labor. 

(a)  EXTENT  OF  CHILD  LABOR  BY  STATES. 

Number  of  Children  Under  16  Employed  at  Gainful 
Occupations. 

(From  the  Census  Volume  on  Occupations,  1900.) 


State. 

Males.  Females. 

State. 

Males.  Females 

Alabama  .  . 

80,989 

41,664 

Nevada  ...... 

183 

*1 

Arizona  .  . . 

1,358 

624 

New  H  a  m  p- 

Arkansas  . 

49,747 

15,321 

shire  . 

2,547 

1,151 

California 

7,187 

2,132 

New  Jersey. . . 

18,457 

11,8041 

Colorado  . . 

2,903 

597 

New  Mexico... 

2,987 

544 

Connecticut 

6,838 

4,741 

New  York .... 

55,218 

36,7*6 

Delaware  . 

2,781 

1,078 

N  o  rt  h  Caro¬ 

District  of 

Co- 

lina  . 

77,986 

32,421 

lumbia  .  . 

1,365 

779 

North  Dakota. 

3,125 

1,019 

Florida  .  . . 

11,281 

4,122 

Ohio  . 

34,165 

12,894 

Georgia  . . . 

77,462 

36,502 

Oklahoma  (inc. 

Idaho  . 

1,395 

141 

I.  T.) . 

20,259 

2,746 

Illinois  . . . 

50,994 

19,541 

Oregon  . 

2,331 

521 

Indiana  .  . . 

26,454 

5,692 

Pennsylvania  . 

84,195 

35,881 

Iowa  . 

24,564 

4,846 

Rhode  Island. 

5,143 

3,891 

Kansas 

20,304 

2,185 

South  Caro¬ 

Kentucky  . 

63,676 

7,441 

lina  . 

56,363 

*8,917 

Louisiana  . 

39,620 

21,427 

South  Dakota. 

5,876 

1,219 

Maine  ....'. 

3,979 

2,013 

Tennessee  —  . 

63,711 

12,651 

Marvland  . 

17,034 

7,886 

Texas  . 

73,604 

17,967 

Massachusetts 

16,393 

11,475 

Utah  . 

2,095 

430 

Michigan 

19,523 

7,174 

Vermont  . 

2,170 

90C 

Minnesota  . 

16,973 

6,041 

Virginia  . 

44,651 

11,094 

Mississippi 

63,906 

34,103 

Washington  .. 

2,807 

578 

«  Missouri  .  . 

> 

52,621 

9,028 

West  Virginia 

22,343 

2,481 

Montana  .  . 

929 

270 

Wisconsin  .... 

20,842 

9,67* 

Nebraska 

12,282 

2,496 

Wyoming  .... 

795 

111 

Total  U.  8..  .1,264,411 

485,767 

Number  of  Child  Workers  by  Age  Periods. 

(From  the  Census  Volume  on.  Occupations.) 


10 

years  . 

.  142,105 

14  years 

11 

years  - — 

.  158,778 

15  years 

12 

years  . 

.  221,313 

13 

years  . . ... . . . 

.  _ _  268,427 

Total 

Total  . 1,750, IT! 


169 


Percentage  of  Child  Workers  to  Total  Child  Population  in 
Twenty  States. 


males.  Males.  Females. 

31.3  Virginia  .  33.7  8.5 

23.5  West  Virginia...  33.0  3.9 

38.3  Texas  .  32.1  8.0 

29.7  Florida  .  31.1  11. 8 

15.8  Missouri  .  25.2  4.4 

22.6  Delaware  .  24.4  9.8 

8.9  Rhode  Island....  23.2  174 

21.6  New  Mexico .  22.6  4.3 

5.1  Maryland  .  22.5  10.5 

Pennsylvania  .  .  .  22.4  9.7 

4.9 


(From  the 

Males. 

Alabama  . 

North,  Carolina 

.  .  55.1 

South  Carolina 

.  .  53.8 

Mississippi  .  .  . 

.  .  53.8 

Arkansas  . 

Georgia  . 

Tennessee  .... 

Louisiana  .... 

.  .  39.4 

Kentucky  .  .  . .  , 

Oklahoma  (inc. 

I. 

T.)  . 

Total  Extent  of  Child  Labor  in  the  United  States. 

(Statistical  Abstract  of  United  States  for  1912,  page  274.) 

•  ™£U*at*0n  ^  to  ^  years  of  age  employed  as  breadwinners 

in  1900. 

Male — 

In  all  occupations  . .  1  264  411 

TnCr  1  numbe,r  of  boys  io-15  years  old  in  if.’s.  ’  26.1 

In  agricultural  pursuits  .  rs* 

In  all  other  occupations  .  .  4007,1 

In  all  occupations  .  47r  7fi7 

Itt^erieultural  °f  glrls  10‘15'  *»  «•'  ^  ^„ioj 

All  others  . .’i .  IVAll 

Total  children  working  . V*. . 1  76n  1?* 

Total  number  of  children  (10-15)  in  U.  S. .'  !!.*.'!! .'  i  ‘ 8,611,3*3 

(b)  EVILS  OF  CHILD  LABOR  DESCRIBED. 

In  the  Senate,  January  23,  1907. 

(Congressional  Record,  Vol.  41,  Part  2,  beginning  page  1553.) 

The  census  figures,  appalling  as  they  are,  are  notoriously  in¬ 
adequate.  Two  million  children  under  16  years  of  age  is  bad 
factories,  mills,  and  sweat  shops  is  bad  enourfS 
Dat  there  is  not  a  man  or  woman  who  has  investigated  this  ques- 

bloVedhwedr«ei ®  w  kS°Y  only  a  Part  of  the  children  so  em- 

returned  by  the  census  enumerators . The  cen¬ 

sus  of  1900  gives  Maryland  as  having  something  over  5,000  chil- 
Sr  vpbe  ™nsHs  bulletins  1905  give  5,553  children 

und®r  11LftfYor^in  Maryland,  of  which  3,666  were  in  Baltimore. 

ic°+  Maryland  law  was  amended  requiring  children 

under  16  to  sehure  permits  testifying  to  physical  and  educational 
requirements.  The  law  has  been  in  force  about  five  months  and  a 
half,  and  already  more  than  11,00  permita  have  been  granted  and 

and  1,50°-  rfQfrUne4d?  S°  We  S6e  that  ln  the  Stat®  of 

Maryiand  the  census  of  1900  is  by  the  record  100%  below  ths 

of  1900'  th tnt  St  esJimat1ed  and  Slven.  I  think,  by  the  census 
®fni1-90?.tbat  the  total  of  children  employed  in  Southern  cotton 
as>  for  example,  in  North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Alabama 
thno  GelrSl?’  13  1sometbing  under  30,000.  Yet  the  testimony  of 
those  who  have  investigated  the  conditions  upon  the  ground  and 
hav_e  n.ot  taken  the  returns  of  manufacturers  who  have  chil¬ 
dren  in  their  employ,  is  that  the  lowest  possible  estimate,  exclud- 

number%ryatPleaSt  eofooaoC.tl0n  °f  chIldren  wh0  Queatlonabl., 

....I  suppose  we  may  say,  putting  it  upon  a  conservative  basis, 
that  as  I  speak  to  you  there  are  now  not  less  than  1,000,000  chil- 
dren  under  16  years  of  age  (and  I  shall  show  by  sworn  testimony 
that  some  of  them  are  five  and  six  and  seven  years  of  age)  at 
work  in  the  coal  mines,  factories  and  sweatshops  of  this  nation. 

. 1  "ball  not  give  a  single  statement  here  today  that  is  not 

now  supported  by  an  affidavit,  or  will  not  be  almost  Im¬ 
mediately  . 

+.  aS*-y»  Mr-  Spargo:  “If  my  little  Paterson  friend  was  IS,  perhaps 
the  nature  of  her  employment  will  explain  her  puny,  stunted  body, 
bhe  works  in  the  steaming  room’  of  the  flax  mill.  All  day  long 
in  a  room  filled  with  clouds  of  steam  she  has  to  stand  barefooted 
m  pools  of  water,  twisting  coils  of  wet  hemp.  When  I  saw  her 
she  was  dripping  wet,  though  she  said  she  had  worn  a  rubber 
apron  all  day.  In  the  coldest  evenings  of  winter  little  Marie  and 
hundreds  of  other  little  girls  must  go  out  from  the  superheated 
steaming  rooms  into  the  bitter  cold  In  Just  that  condition.’5’ 

To  that  statement  Mr.  Spargo  makes  affidavit . 

Here  is  Mr.  Spargo’s  description  of  a  glass  factory:** . “The 

work  of  these  carrying-in-boys  (boys  who  took  the  red  hot’  bot- 
ues  from  the  benches),  several  of  whom  were  less  than  twelve 
year*  old,  was  by  far  the  hardest  of  all.  They  were  kept  on  a 
back  Tgafn1  *he  tlme  fr0m  the  benchesto  the  annealing  oven  and 

-  to  the  annealing  oven  was  100  feet,  and  the  boy* 

made  72  trips  per  hour,  making  the  distance  travel*;'  in  eight 
hours  nearly  2^  miles.  Over  half  of  this  distance  thr.  .  vs  were 


170 


carrying  their  hot  loads  to  the  oven.  The  pay  of  these  boy* 

varies  from  60  cents  to  a  dollar  for  eight  hours’  work.” . 

Child  Labor  In  the  Coal  “Breakers.” — Mr.  Spargo:  "Clouds  of 
dust  fill  the  breakers  and  are  inhaled  by  the  boys,  laying  the 
foundation  for  asthma  and  miners’  consumption. 

"I  once  stood  on  a  breaker  for  half  an  hour  and  tried  to  do  the 
work  a  12-year-old  boy  was  doing  day  after  day,  fourteen  hours 
at  a  stretch  for  60  cents  a  day. 


"The  gloom  of  the  breaker  appalled  me.  Outside  the  sun  shone 
brightly,  the  air  was  pellucid,  and  the,  birds  sang  in  chorus  with 
the  trees  and  rivers. 

"Within  the  breaker  there  was  blackness,  clouds  of  deadly  dust 
enfolded  everything,  the  harsh,  grinding  roar  of  the  machinery 
and  the  ceaseless  rushing  of  coal  through  the  chutes  filled  the 
ears. 

"I  tried  to  pick  out  the  pieces  of  slate  from  the  hurrying 
stream  of  coal,  often  missing  them;  my  hands  were  bruised  and 
cut  in  a  few  minutes.  I  was  covered  from  head  to  foot  with 
coal  dust  and  for  many  hours  afterwards  I  was  expectorating 
some  of  the  small  particles  of  anthracite  I  had  swallowed.  I 
could  not  do  that  work  and  live;  but  there  were  boys  of  10  and 
12  years  of  age  doing  it  for  50  and  00  cents  a  day.  Some  of  them 
had  never  been  inside  of  a  school;  few  of  them  could  read  a 
child’s  primer.” 

Mr.  Spargo  has  made  an  affidavit  to  the  truth  of  these  state¬ 
ments  . 

Mr.  Lovejoy  tells  us: 

"For  nine  hours  a  day  these  little  fellows  toll  in  the  breaker, 
bending  over  the  coal  chute,  with  their  feet  in  the  coal,  picking 
out  the  rock  and  slate.  We  are  often  asked  whether  this  air  1* 
bad  for  the  health!  A  five  minute  visit  to  such  a  breaker  will 
coat  the  lungs  and  throat  with  a  black  dust  which  twenty-four 
hours  of  pure  air  can  not  clear  from  the  mucous  linings ....  This 
9  hour  day  is  broken  by  the  dinner  ‘hour’  beginning  in  somi 

breakers  at  12:05  and  ending  at  12:25! . of  course  all  of  us  are 

anxious  to  have  our  own  children  work  as  these  boys  work,  for 
are  we  not  all  ‘self-made  men?’  But  isn’t  the  eating  a  little 
hard?.... But  let  us  follow  Mr.  Lovejoy.  He  says  under  oath: 

"Allowing  the  boys  20  minutes  to  swallow  the  contents  of  their 
dinner  pails  with  unwashed  hands  and  dust-filled  throats  and 
lungs.... to  sit  bent  over  a  stream  of  coal  that  pours  a  cloud  of 
dust  so  thick  that  the  light  cannot  penetrate;  to  be  responsible 
for  the  exact  separation  from  the  coal  of  all  slate  and  rock,  de¬ 
pending  often  entirely  upon  the  sense  of  touch;  to  endure  the 
incessant  rattle  of  deafening,  gigantic  machinery;  to  suffer  the 
stifling  summer  heat  and  the  choice  between  the  blasts  that  sweep 
these  mountain  tops  and  the  cloud  of  smothering  dust  in  the 
winter;  to  be  conscious  that  the  ‘boss’  stands  behind  with  a 
stick  or  a  small  piece  of  coal  to  prompt  to  duty  if  the  natural 
exuberance  of  childhood  breaks  out  in  playfulness  or  if  backache 
induces  a  moment  of  forgetfulness;  to  have  the  hands  cut  and 
crippled  and  hardened  by  contact  with  the  rough  stones  and  bits 
of  sharp  edged  coal;  to  learn  to  control  -the  nausea  caused  by 
swallowing  quantities  of  coal  dust,  and  by  the  feeling  that  one’s 
throat  and  lungs  are  never  clean, . 

"That  is  the  description  of  the  work  these  boys  are  called  upon 

to  do  in  the  breakers _ -Every  time  you  find  a  ‘clinker’  In  your 

grate  or  stove  you  may  know  that  it  represents  the  utter  exhaus¬ 
tion  of  a  boy  from  8  years  old  to,  perhaps,  14  years  old. 

"Twelve  thousand  little  boys,  ranging  in  age  from  9  to  14  years, 
are  believed  to  be  working  in  the  coal  breakers  of  the  anthracite 
field.  This  estimate  was  made  a  year  ago  after  an  investigation 
by  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee.  Another  investigation 
Just  completed  confirms  the  former  estimate.” 

“The  tissues  of  the  boys’  lungs  gather  the  black  specks  until 
the  whole  lung  is  discolored,  and  I  have  seen  boys  who  have  been 
away  from  the  breakers  and  mines  for  eight  and  even  ten  years 
cough  up  these  particles  whenever  they  were  attacked  by  a  slight 


eold. 

"Experiment  has  shown  that  the  work  of  the  breaker  boys  can 
be  dont  oy  machinery.  Automatic  slate  pickers  have  been  dem¬ 
onstrated  to  be  practicable.  FLESH  AND  BLOOD  ARE  AT  PRES¬ 
ENT  DEEMED  CHEAPER  COMMODITIES  THAN  IRON  AND 
STEEL,  and  the  state  permits  the  boys  to  do  the  work  at  14. . . ... 

“  ‘I  deplore  this  business  as  much  as  you  do,'  a  silk-mill 
owner  said  to  me  one  day,  ‘but  I  am  part  of  a  great  Industrial 
system,  and  so  long  as  the  system  exists  I  must  run  my  mills  as 
other  mills  are  run.’  „  „  ,  .  v 

"When  I  saw  a  small  girl  (In  the  silk  mills  of  Pennsylvania); 
whose  thin  features  and  lusterless  eyes  attracted  my  attention,  I 
asked  her  age.  ‘Eleven,  past,  sir,'  she  answered.  ‘How  long  have 
you  worked  in  the  mill?'  ‘Two  years.’  So  she  began  at  nine 
years  and  in  a  State  where  the  law  fixes  the  limit  at  13. 

"‘Do  you  always  work  night  shift?’  ‘Yes,  sir;  all  the  time. 
Now,  let  us  see  the  conditions  under  which  they  are  working.  Of 
course  they  are  not  our  children.  They  are  the  children  of  some¬ 
body  else  that  are  working  twelve  hours  a  night.  If  they  were 
our  children  we  should  forget  lunch  and  not  sit  up  nights  con¬ 
triving  arguments  to  show  that  the  Constitution  won  t  let  u* 


rescue  them.” 

Child  labor  in  the  Mills. — A  little  girl 


years  old  went  through 


this: 


171 

“  ‘When  I  looked  at  other  things  there  were  threads  running 
across  them.  Sometimes  I  felt  as  though  the  threads  were  cut¬ 
ting  my  eyes.’  ” 

Bad  as  this  aspect  is,  there  is  another,  a  sadder  and  more  ter¬ 
rible  feature.  The  close  atmosphere  of  the  factory  rooms  in  the 
dead  of  night  tends  to  stupefy  the  children.  To  freshen  them  and 
to  drive  the  natural  drowsiness  away  they  are  encouraged  to 
spend  their  midnight  half  hour  running  in  the  open  air. 

Mark  that  humanity.  The  silk  mills  really  give  the  children  a 
£i!^,*10^r1.£or  luncheon  at  midnight.  I  hope  American  women  will 
think  of  these  things  when  they  put  on  their  silks.  Mr.  Durland 
goes  on: 

‘‘The  silk  mills  usually  occupy  isolated  sites _ Open  fields  and 

shadowy  woods  surround  them.” 

And  then  occurs  a  statement  which  I  prefer  not  to  read  but 
which  every  Senator  will  quickly  infer . 

*  ,/.'•••  *^e  are  not  talking  about  something  that  is  old.  We  are 
talking  about  a  new  and  increasing  evil. 

(Mr.  Beveridge  next  read  extracts  from  an  article  by  Miss  Ash¬ 
by,  published  in  World’s  Work.  It  describes  child  labor  in 

southern  cotton  mills.)  Miss  Ashby  says:  “ . Some  of 

them  run  the  machinery  by  night,  and  the  little  children  are 
called  on  to  endure  the  strain  of  all-night  work....” 

I  would  not  read  the  following  if  I  did  not  have  another  wit- 

ness  to  this  fact.  “ - And  are  sometimes  kept  awake  by  the 

vigilant  superintendent  with  cold  water  dashed  into  their  faces 
I  should  hardly  have  believed  it  had  I  not  seen  these  things 
myself.”  (Here  follows  an  account  of  her  visit  to  a  home  where 
lived  a  little  fellow  six  years  old  who  had  worked  nights  for  a 
year.)  In  answer  to  a  -query  by  me,  the  child  said  he  could  hardly 
sleep  at  all  in  the  day  time.  At  one  place  I  heard  of  children 
working  on  the  night  shift,  turned  out  for  some  fault  at  2  o’clock 
In  the  morning.  ..  .Ladies  told  me,  too,  of  a  common  sight  in  the 
mill  cottages — children  lying  face  downward  on  the  bed  sleeping 
with  exhaustion,  just  as  they  had  come  in  from  the  night  shift 

too  utterly  weary  to  remove  their  clothes .  Often 

the  whole  family,  except  the  baby  actually  in  the  cradle,  is  in  the 
min.  Two  or  three  of  eight  years  or  older  might  be  on  the  pay 
roll,  but  the  youngest  paid  worker  can  get  through  her  ‘side’  at 
10  cents  a  day.  ...” 

At  ten  cents  a  day!  A  child  six  years  of  age,  working  12  hours 

standing  on  her  feet,  at  ten  cents  a  day.  ‘‘At  ten  cents  a  day _ 

with  more  ease  if  she  has  her  little  brother  of  4  to  help  her 

‘‘I  have^seen  a  boy  under  four  beginning  his  life  of  drudgerv  bv 

pulling  the  yarn  off  bobbins  to  make  bands . I  am  familiar 

with  the  slums  of  two  continents,  but  I  can  say  I  have  never  seen 
a  more  pitiful  sight  than  the  mill  children,  nor  known  little  ones 
for  whom  the  outlook  was  more  hopeless. 

“It  is  not  only  that  they  are  pale,  shrunken  and  bowed — thev 
look  as  if  their  brains  were  hypnotized  and  their  souls  paralyzed 
A  friend  of  mine  in  Atlanta,  thinking  to  give  some  of  the  little 
victims  a  treat,  asked  a  number  out  to  her  place  in  the  countrv 
and  turned  them  into  the  woods  to  play.  What  was  her  distress 
and  amazement  to  find  that  they  did  not  know  what  the  word  or 
the  thing  meant.” 


Some  Typical  Cases. 

Following  are  a  few  more  statements,  selected  from  scores 
of  them  just  as  horrible,  which  Mr.  Beveridge  quoted  before  the 
Senate.  Remember,  these  quoted  statements  were  all  sworn  to 
before,  a  notary  public.  The  figures  are  the  page  numbers  of 
the  volume  named  above. 

1799.  The  estimate  that  there  are  today  some  60,000  children 
14  years  of  age  or  under  that  work  in  the  cotton  mills  of  the 
South. — Mr.  Beveridge. 

1800.  The  question  of  child  labor  Is  not  confined  to  any  one 
section  of  the  country;  it  is  national;  and  in  the  South  it  is 
native,  one  may  say,  owing  to  the  absence  as  yet  of  all  foreign 
elements  in  the  population. — Mrs.  Van  Vorst. 

And  a  manufacturer  in  my  own  town  voiced  the  spirit  that 
animates  most  men  who  take  a  position  like  the  head  of  this 
mill  took.  He  said:  “We  are  a  prolific  race.  If  they  die  there  will 
be  plenty  more.” 

1804.  They  can  be  seen  coming  out  of  the  mills  at  night  liter¬ 
ally  soaked  to  the  skin  with  dyes  of  various  colors.  In  the  winter 
time,  after  a  fall  of  snow,  it  i»  possible  to  track  them  to  their 
homes,  not  only  by  their  colored  footprints,  but  by  the  drippings 
from  their  clothing. — Mr.  Spargo. 

So  long  as  the  girls  can  be  kept  working  (in  the  cotton  and 
woolen  mills)  and  only  a  few  of  them  faint,  the  mills  are  kept 
going;  but  when  falntings  are  so  many  and  so  frequent  that  it 
does  not  pay  to  keep  going,  the  mills  are  closed. 

1806.  Pneumonia  carries  off  most  of  them.  Their  systems  are 
ripe  for  disease,  and  when  it  comes  there  is  no  rebound  no  re¬ 
sponse.  Medicine  simply  does  not  act. — Elbert  Hubbard.' 

The  lowest  estimate  now  is  that  we  are  pouring  into  American 
citizenship  every  year  at  least  200,000  “Hooligans,”  boys  and  girls 
who  are  broken  in  body  and  stunted  In  mind,  and  soul  and  who 
know  it,  and  who  are  living  engines  of  hatred  toward  societv 
and  who  become  the  parents  of  still  other  degenerates  ■y* 


172 


Affidavit  o f  A.  J.  McKelvey: 

United  States  of  America,  District  of  Columbia. 

Personally  appeared  before  me  this  day  A.  J.  McKelvey,  who 
on  oath  says  that  in  December,  1905,  he  was  on  board  a  train 
going  from  Knoxville,  Tenn.,  to  Spartanburg,  S.  C.;  that  he  saw 
on  board  the  train  an  immigration  agent  of  an  immigration  as¬ 
sociation  of  South  Carolina,  who  was  in  charge  of  a  company  of 
about  50  people  bound  for  the  cotton  mills  of  South  Carolina, 
whom  the  agent  had  induced  to  leave  their  homes  in  Tennessee; 
that  the  agent  told  him  that  he  had  made  seven  “shipments”  of 
these  people  for  the  cotton  mills  from  Newport,  Tenn.,  averaging 
fifteen  to  the  “shipment”;  that  seven  more  “shipments”  had  gone 
from  Cleveland,  Tenn.,  that  there  were  several  agents  at  work 
beside  himself;  and  that  he  had  shipped  personally  about  500  peo¬ 
ple  to  the  cotton  mills; — that  he,  A.  J.  McKelvey,  talked  with 
some  of  the  children  in  the  company;  that  Harrison  Swan  said  h« 
was  going  on  ten  years  of  age  and  was  going  to  work,  in  tha 
Pour  Mills,  at  Greenville,  S.  C.,  that  the  agent  told  him  there 
were  plenty  of  children  6  and  8  and  10  years  of  age  in  the  South 
Carolina  mills.  A.  J.  MoKELVEY. 

Subscribed  and  sworn  to  before  me  this  22d  day  of  January, 
1907.  E.  L.  CORNELIUS, 

Notary  Public,  District  of  Columbia. 

1794.  Th-'  boss  (in  the  coal  breakers)  is  armed  with  a  stick, 
with  which  he  occasionally  raps  on  the  head  and  shoulders  of  a 
boy  who  betrays  lack  of  zeal.  This  is  in  America,  you  know. — 
Mr.  Nichols. 

Mill  children  are  so  stunned  that  every  foreman,  as  you  enter 
the  mills,  will  tell  you  that  you  can  not  judge  their  ages.  A 
horrible  form  of  dropsy  occurs  among  the  children.  A  doctor  In 
a  city  mill,  who  has  made  a  special  study  of  the  subject,  tells 
me  that  10  per  cent  of  the  children  who  go  to  work  before  It 
years  of  age,  after  five  years  contract  active  consumption. 

In  one  mill  city  In  the  South  a  doctor  told  a  friend,  that  he  had 
personally  amputated  more  than  a  hundred  babies’  fingers  man¬ 
gled  in  the  mill. 

Child  labor  has  increased  beyond  all  proportion  to  labor  of 
men  and  women,  and  while  dividends  average  35  per  cent,  and 
sometimes  rise  as  high  as  80  or  90  per  cent  the  average  wage 
is  steadily  dropping. 

(c)  DAMNING  EVIDENCE  OF  CHILD  SLAVERY  IN 
THE  SOUTH. 

(From  Vol.  I  of  Senate  Document  No.  645,  Report  on  Condition 
of  Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners  in  the  United  States.) 

At  a  South  Carolina  mill  a  widow,  whose  child  11  years  old 
was  at  work,  said  that  after  the  agent’s  first  visit  to  the  mill 
the  superintendent  sent  her  child  home  and  said  he  would  have 
to  take  he*r  name  from  the  payroll.  A  few  days  later  he  asked 
the  mother  to  make  an  affidavit  that  she  was  unable  to  support 
the  child.  She  refused  to  do  so,  declaring  that  she  was  able  to 
support  the  child.  In  a  few  days  the  child  was  sent  for  and 
was  again  regularly  employed.  Her  age  was  reported  by  the 
company  as  14  years. 

At  still  another  mill  in  the  same  state  a  woman  said:  “They 
just  keep  at  a  person  until  they  have  to  let  them  work  whether 
they  want  to  or  not.  I  don’t  want  them  to  know  that  I’ve  got 
another  gal.  They’d  have  her  right  in  that  mill,  and  I  want  her 
to  help  me.”  A  boy  of  10  years  was  already  working,  and  the 
girl  referred  to  was  9. 

At  a  mill  in  North  Carolina  a  wpman  said  that  the  superin¬ 
tendent  sent  for  both  her  boys  and  required  her  to  take  them 
out  of  school.  She  refused  for  a  time,  but  yielded  because  she 
feared  that  her  husband  would  lose  his  job.  The  boys  were  11 
and  14  years  old. 

At  another  mill  in  North  Carolina  the  mill  company  threat¬ 
ened  to  evict  a  widow  from  a  company  house  because  her  child, 
11  years  old,  too  often  remained  at  home  sick  instead'of  work¬ 
ing. 

In  a  mill  in  South  Carolina,  although  there  were  17  employes 
under  12  years  of  age,  none  were  so  reported.  The  agent  who 
investigated  the  mill  wrote:  “Nobody  not  of  unusual  gullibility 
can  believe  that  the  overseers  in  all  these  cases  need  have  been 
deceived.  Several  children  were  scarcely  9  years  of  age  and  so 
young  in  appearance  that  no  person  of  ordinary  experience 
should  be  deceived  as  to  their  ages.  v 


173 


(d)  STREET  TRADES. 
Newsboys  in  Chicago. 


(From  the  Report  of  a  Committee  appointed  by  the  Federation 
of  Chicago  Settlements  which  investigated  1,000  newsboys.) 

Page  17.  Mr.  Sloan,  the  former  superintendent  of  the  John 
Worthy  School,  authorizes  the  statement  that  “one-third  of  the 
newsboys  who  come  to  the  John  Worthy  School  have  venereal 
disease  and  that  ten  per  cent  of  the  remaining  newsboys  at 
present  in  the  Bridewell  are,  according  to  the  physician’s  diag¬ 
nosis,  suffering  from  diseases  due  to  unnatural  relations  with 
men.” 

Mr.  Sloan  also  states  that  “the  newsboy  who  comes  to  the 
John  Worthy  School  is,  on  the  average,  one-third  below  the 
ordinary  boy  in  development  physically.” 


PARENTS  OF  NEWSBOYS. 

Both  living  . 

Father  dead  . 

Mother  dead . 

Both  dead  . 


Per  cent 

803  80.8 

97  9.7 

74  7.4 

26  2.6 


Total  . 

AVERAGE  DAILY  EARNINGS. 

Number  of  boys  . 

Total  earnings  . 

Average  earnings  . 


1,000 


1,000 

$496.57 

.50 


The  Night  Messenger. 

(From  an  Article  by  Owen  R.  Lovejoy,  General  Secretary 
National  Child  Labor  Association,  in  the  Review  of 
Review  of  Reviews,  November,  1910.) 

A  substantial  percentage  of  this  work  is  in  catering  to  the 
desires  of  the  most  vicious  elements  in  our  cities.  An  investi¬ 
gation  was  conducted  in  some  thirty  cities  of  nine  states  during 
the  past  winter,  which  substantiated  the  earlier  reports  of  ex¬ 
treme  demoralization  of  night  messenger  boys. 

*  *  *  One  Industrial  School  in  New  York  State  shows  that 
of  378  inmates  examined  59  had  been  at  one  time  night  messen¬ 
gers;  in  a  similar  institution  in  Ohio,  of  1,125  boys  138  had  been 
night  messengers,  and  many  had  records  of  social  offenses  dark 
enough  for  barbarism. 


(e)  CHILD  LABOR  LEGISLATION. 


Number  of  states. 

North.  South.  West.  Total. 


Child  Labor  Law  first  passed . 

Compulsory  Education  Law  first  passed 
14-year  age  limit  in  factories  and  stores 

14-year  age  limit  in  mines . 

Eight-hour  day  . 

Other  reduction  of  hours . 

Prohibition  of  night  work  under  16  years 

Proof  of  age  required . 

Certificate  of  physical  fitness  to  work  re¬ 
quired  . 

Enforcing  agency  established . 

CHILD  LABOR  ALLOWED. 


Children  under  14  years  may  work  in 

factories,  etc . • . 

Children  under  16  years  may  work  at 

night  .  11 

Children  under  16  years  may  work  more 

than  eight  hours  a  day . •• 

Children  under  16  years  may  work  in 

dangerous  occupations  . 

Boys  under  16  may  work  in  mines. 

Proof  of  age  is  not  required  in.... 

No  adequate  system  factory  inspection 
Boys  under  16  may  work  as  night  mes- 

B  AlTstat’es’  with  important  canning  industries  employ  children 
without  restriction;  the  chief  cities  in  which  clothing,  artificial 
flowers  and  other  articles  are  made  in  tenements  are  without 
laws  to  protect  little  children;  and,  with  the  exception  of  Bos- 


.  1 

3 

3 

7 

;  7 

3 

7 

17 

3 

1 

4 

8 

4 

7 

11 

7 

'i 

2 

13 

i  8 

3 

7 

IS 

9 

1 

7 

17 

10 

3 

13 

2  7  4 

)WED. 

Number  of  States. 

12 

North.  South.  West.  Total. 

4 

7 

2 

IS 

11 

8 

14 

S3 

16 

9 

10 

35 

9 

9 

17 

25 

9 

7 

9 

26 

6 

10 

7 

23 

2 

4 

4 

10 

IB 

12 

13 

44 

174 


ton,  Cincinnati  and  Milwaukee,  none  of  the  large  cities  have 
more  than  made  a  beginning  in  the  regulation  of  street  trades 


10.  Women  Workers. 


(a) 


WOMEN  WORKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  BY 
OCCUPATION. 


(Compiled  from  United  States  Census  of  1900.) 


Occupation. 

All  occupations  . 

Agricultural  pursuits  . 

Agricultural  laborers  . 

Dairy  women  . 

Farmers,  planters  and  overseers . 

Gardeners,  florists,  etc . 

Stockraisers,  herders  and  drovers . 

Turpentine  farmers  and  laborers . 

Wood-choppers  . 

Other  agricultural  pursuits . 

e, vice  .  .'  . '.  i  .  .  .  . . . . 

Actors,  etc . . . 

Architects,  designers,  etc . 

Artists  and  teachers  of  art . 

Clergy  . . . •  ••• 

Dentists  . . . . . 

Electricians  . . . 

Engineers  (civil,  etc.)  and  surveyors . 

Journalists  . 

Lawyers  . 

Literary  and  scientific  persons . 

Musicians  and  teachers  of  music . 

Officials  (government)  . 

Physicians  and  surgeons  . . 

Teachers  and  professors  in  colleges,  etc... 

Other  professional  service . 

Domestic  and  personal  services . 

Barbers  and  hairdressers . 

Bartenders  . . 

Boarding  and  lodging  house  keepers . 

Hotel  keepers  . . 

Housekeepers  and  stewards  . 

Janitors  and  sextons . 

Laborers  (not  specified)  . 

Laundresses  . 

Nurses  and  midwives . . . 

Restaurant  keepers  . 

Saloon  keepers  . 

Servants  and  waiters . 

Watchmen,  policemen,  firemen,  etc . 

Other  domestic  and  personal  service . . 

Trade  and  transportation. . . 

Agents  . 

Bankers  and  brokers . 

Boatmen  and  sailors . 

Bookkeepers  and  accountants . 

Clerks  and  coypists . 

Commercial  travelers  . 

Dairymen,  hackmen,  teamsters,  etc . 

Overseers  . 

Hostlers  . . 

Hucksters  and  peddlers . 

Livery  stable  keepers  . . 

Merchants  and  dealers  (except  .wholesale) 

Merchants  and  dealers  (wholesale) . 

Messengers,  etc.  . .... . 

Officials  of  bank  companies . 

Packers  and  shippers  . . . 

Porters  and  helpers  (in  stores,  etc.) . 

Saleswomen  . , . 

Steam  railroad  employes  . . 

Stenographers  and  typewriters . 

Street  railway  employes  . 

Telegraph  and  telephone  operators . • 

Undertakers  . . 

Other  persons  in  trade  and  transportation. 
Manufacturing  and  mechanical  pursuits... 
Building  Trade* — 

Carpenters  and  joiners  . 

Masons  (brick  and  stone) . 

Painters,  glaziers  and  varnlshers . 

Paper  hangers  . 

PlsistBrcrs  . . . * . . .  •  i 

Plumbers  and  gas  and  steam  fitters . 

Roofers  and  slaters . . . .  •  •  •  • . 

Mechanics  (not  otherwise  specified) . 

Chemical  and  Allied  Products — 

Oil  well  and  oil  works  employes . 

Other  chemical  workers . . . 

Clay,  Glass  and  Stone  Products— 

Brick  and  tile  makers,  etc . 

Glass  workers  . . 


.5,319,912 

.  977,336 

.  633,209 
892 
.  307,706 

2,860 
1,932 
281 
113 
243 

.  430,576 

6,857 
1,041 
11,021 
3,373 
786 
409 
84 
2,192 
1,010 
5,984 
.  52,359 

8,119 
7,387 
.  327,614 

2,339 
.  2,095,441 
5,574 
440 
59,455 
8,53 
.  146,929 

8,032 
.  123,975 

.  335,282 

.  108,691 

4,845 
2,08€ 
.1,283,763 
87S 
6,964 
.  503,347 

.  10,556 

293 
153 
74,153 
85,246 
946 
904 
1,418 
79 
2,951 
190 
34,084 
261 
6,68S 
1,271 
19,988 
666 

.  149,280 

1,688 
86,118 
46 

22,556 

823 

3,700 

1,313,204 


546 

167 

1,759 
5  45 
241 

126 


43 


52 

2,799 


478 

28,621 


175 


Marble  and  stone  cutters  . 

Potters  . . . 

Fishing  and  Mining — 

Fishermen  and  oystermen . . . 

Miners  and  quarrymen  . 

Food  and  Kindred  Products — 

Bakers  . 

Butchers  . . 

Confectioners  . 

Millers  . 

Other  food  preparers  . 

Iron  and  Steel  and  Their  Products — 

Blacksmiths  . 

Iron  and  steel  workers  . 

Machinists  . 

Steam  boilermakers  . 

Stove,  furnace  and  grate  makers . 

Tool  and  cutlery  makers . 

Wheelwrights  . 

Wire  workers  . 

Leather  and  Its  Finished  Products — 

Boot  and  shoemakers  and  repairers . 

Harness  and  saddle  makers  and  repairers . 

Leather  curriers  and  tanners . 

Trunk  and  leather  case  makers,  etc . 

Liquors  and  Beverages — 

Bottlers  and  soda  water  makers,  etc . 

Brewers  and  maltsters  . 

Distillers  and  rectifiers  . 

Lumber  and  Its  Manufactures— 

Cabinet  makers  . 

Coopers  . 

Saw  and  planing  mill  employes . 

Other  woodworkers  . 

Metal  and  Metal  Products  Other  Than  Iron  and  Steel — 

Brass  workers  . 

Clock  and  watch  makers  and  repairers . 

Gold  and  silver  workers  . . . ^ . 

Tinplate  and  tinware  makers . 

Other  metal  workers  . 

Paper  and  Printing- 

Bookbinders  . 

Box  makers  (paper)  . 

Engravers  . . . 

Paper  and  pulp  mill  operatives . 

Printers,  lithographers  and  pressmen . 

Textile — 

Bleachery  and  dye  works  operatives . 

Carpet  factory  operatives  . 

Cotton  mill  operatives  . 

Hosiery  and  knitting  mill  operatives . 

Silk  mill  operatives . 

Woolen  mill  operatives . . . 

Other  textile  mill  operatives . 

Dressmakers  . 

Hat  and  cap  makers  . . . 

Milliners  . 

Seamstresses  . 

Shirt,  collar  and  cuff  makers . 

Talloresses  . 

r  textile  workers  . 

Industries— 

Broom  and  brush  makers . 

Charcoal,  coke  and  lime  burners . . . . 

ciiiu  ruemen  (not  locomotive) . 


Manufacturers  and  officials,  etc . 

Model  and  pattern  makers . 

Photographers  . . 

Rubber  factory  operatives . 

Tobacco  and  cigar  factory  operatives 

Upholsterers  . 

Other  miscellaneous  industries  . 


143 

2,940 

462 

1,365 

4,328 

371 

9,214 

166 

1,142 

193 

3,370 

571 

8 

43 

746 

10 

1,786 


39,519 

595 

1,754 

1,579 

794* 

275 

30 

67 

113 

373 

6,805 


890 

4,851 

6,380 

1,775 

2,320 


15,632 

17,302 

453 

9,424 

15,981 


1,785 

9,017 

120,216 

34,490 

32,437 

30.630 

51,182 

344,794 

7,623 

86,120 

146,105 

30,941 

68,935 

21,042 


1,577 

41 

177 

7,763 

3,433 

204 

3,680 

7,347 

43,497 

2,158 

90,810 


Synopsis. 

Women  at  work,  1900,  including  485,765  girls  under  16  years 

old: 


Agricultural  pursuits  . . . 

Professional  service  . 

Domestic  and  personal  service. . . 

Trade  and  transportation  . 

Manufacturing  and  mechanical 


977,336 

430,697 

2,095,449 

503,347 

.1,312,668 


Total  . . 5,319,897 

Note — The  Census  Bulletin  on  occupations  for  1910  has  not  yet 

been  published. 

(b)  WOMEN  DISPLACE  MEN. 

That  the  labor  of  women  replaces  that  of  men  in  clerical 
occupations  as  well  as  in  factory  work  is  made  clear  by  Miss 
Helen  L.  Sumner,  the  author  of  Volume  IX  of  the  Federal  Re¬ 
port  on  Women  and  Child  Wage  Earners. 


176 


In  1870  there  were  reported  to  be  employed  in  this  group 
of  occupations,  including  “stenographers  and  typewriters,” 
“clerks  and  copyists,”  and  “bookkeepers  and  accountants,”  only 
9,982  women.  In  1880  the  number  increased  to  28,698,  in  1890 
to  168,808,  and  in  1900  to  238,892.  Meanwhile  the  proportion 
which  women  formed  of  the  total  number  of  persons  engaged 
in  these  occupations  rose  from  3.3  per  cent  in  1870  to  5.7  per 
cent  in  1880  and  to  16.9  per  cent  in  1890.  In  1900,  75.7  per  cent 
of  the  stenographers  and  typewriters,  12.9  per  cent  of  the  clerks 
and  copyists  and  28.6  per  cent  of  the  bookkeepers  and  account¬ 
ants  were  women. 

(c)  CAUSES  THAT  LED  TO  WOMAN’S  POSITION  IN 
INDUSTRY. 

(From  Senate  Document  No.  645,  Vol.  IX,  pages  15-16.) 

Machinery,  combined  with  division  of  labor  and  the  substitu¬ 
tion  of  water,  steam  and  electric  power  for  human  muscles,  has 
certainly  made  it  possible  to  employ  the  unskilled  labor  of 
women  in  occupations  formerly  carried  on  wholly  by  men. 

Division  of  labor,  indeed,  which  has  always  accompanied 
and  frequently  preceded  machinery,  is  probably  even  more  re¬ 
sponsible  than  the  latter  for  the  introduction  of  women  into  new 
occupations.  The  most  striking  single  tendency  in  manufac¬ 
turing  industries  has  been  toward  the  division  and  the  sub¬ 
division  of  processes,  thereby  making  possible  the  use  of  wom¬ 
an’s  work,  as  well  as  the  unskilled  man’s  work,  in  larger  pro¬ 
portion  to  that  of  skilled  operatives.  A  more  recent  tendency 
toward  the  combination  of  several  machines  into  one  has  even 
been  checked,  in  some  cases,  because  a  competent  machinist 
would  have  to  be  hired.  Unless  the  advantage  of  the  com¬ 
plicated  mechanism  is  very  great,  in  many  industries  simpler 
machinery,  which  can  be  easily  run  by  wortien,  is  preferred. 

The  Civil  War  was  another  force  which  not  only  drove  into 
gainful  occupations  a  large  number  of  women,  but  compelled 
many  changes  in  their  employments.  In  1869  it  was  estimated 
that  there  were  25,000  working  women  in  Boston  who  had  been 
forced  by  the  war  to  earn  their  living. 

Similar  to  war  in  its  influence,  and  in  some  ways  more  dire¬ 
ful,  has  been  the  influence  of  industrial  depressions. 

Industrial  depressions,  too,  like  war,  have  taken  away  from 
thousands  of  women  the  support  of  the  men  upon  whom  they 
were  dependent  and  have  forced  them  to  snatch  at  any  occu¬ 
pation  which  promised  them  a  pittance. 

(d)  WOMEN’S  WAGES. 

Starvation  Wages  of  Girls  and  Women  in  Massachusetts. 

(Pearson’s  Magazine,  August,  1912,  page  11.) 

On  the  11th  of  May,  1911,  the  commonwealth  of  Massachu¬ 
setts  authorized  its  governor  to  “appoint  a  commission  of  five 
persons,  citizens  of  the  commonwealth,  of  whom  at  least  one 
shall  be  a  woman,  one  shall  be  a  representative  of  labor  and  one 
shall  be'  a  representative  of  employers,  to  study  the  matter  of 
wages  of  women  and  minors  and  to  report  on  the  advisability 
of  establishing  a  board  or  boards  to  which  shall  be  referred 
inquiries  as  to  the  need  and  feasibility  of  fixing  minimum  rates 
of  wages  for  women  or  minors  in  any  industry.”  The  commis¬ 
sion  presented  its  report  in  January  of  this  year. 

The  Massachusetts  census  of  1905  gave  the  total  number  of 
females  gainfully  employed  in  that  state  as  380,675.  Many  of 
these  were  in  the  cotton  textile  industry  which  was  admirably 
covered  in  the  federal  investigation,  and  the  Massachusetts 
commission  made  use  of  these  figurse  and  added  to  them  its 


177 


own  investigation  of  three  others:  Retail  stores,  candy  fac¬ 
tories  and  laundries.  “Thus  altogether,  information,  more  or 
less  detailed  but  all  of  a  thoroughly  reliable  character,  being 
based  upon  payrolls  and  first  hand  inquiries  by  trained  investi¬ 
gators,  was  gathered  covering  15,278  female  wage  earners 
engaged  in  four  different  occupations  in  the  commonwealth.” 

They  found  that  41  per  cent  of  the  candy  workers,  10.2  per 
cent  of  the  saleswomen,  16.1  per  cent  of  the  laundry  workers 
and  23  per  cent  of  the  cotton  workers  earn  less  than  $5  a  week; 
and  that  65.2  per  cent  of  the  candy  workers,  29.5  per  cent  of  the 
saleswomen,  40.7  per  cent  of  the  laundry  workers  and  39.9  per 
cent  of  the  icotton  workers  earn  less  than  $6  a  week. 

The  government  figures  show  that  more  than  one-fifth  of 
these' girls  and  women  are  completely  self-dependent,  and  in 
many  cases  the  partial  or  whole  support  of  others  (on  an  av¬ 
erage  wage  of  $7.33,  which  high  average  more  than  a  fourth  of 
them  do  not  come  within  $1.33  of  touching) ;  and  of  those  who 
live  at  home,  more  than  four-fifths  contribute  their  entire  earn¬ 
ings  to  the  family  fund.  *  *  * 

The  same  authorities  (30  prominent  social  workers  in  con¬ 
ference  on  “what  it  would  cost  a  woman  of  average  ability, 
initiative  and  intelligence  when  living  at  home,  and  also  when 
living  away  from  home,  to  secure  the  necessary  comforts  of 
life”)  estimated  the  fair  personal  expense's  of  such  a  worker 
to  be: 


Carfares  . $0.52 

Clothes  .  1.92 

Dentistry,  doctor’s  fees,  medicine,  oculist . 52 

Recreation  and  vacation  . 54 

Education  (papers,  magazines) . 07 

Church  . 10 


Total  . $3.67 

For  the  girl  or  woman  not  living  at  home  the  following  esti¬ 

mate  was  made: 

Rent  and  carfare  . $  3.00 

Pood  . 4.00 

Laundry  . 55 

Clothes  .  1.92 

Dentistry,  etc . 42 

Recreation  and  vacation  . .54 

Church  . 10 

Education  (newspapers)  .....* . 07 


Total  . . $10.60 


Wages  in  Massachusetts. 

(Report  of  the  Commission  on  Minimum  Wage  Boards,  Janu¬ 
ary,  1912,  House  No.  1697.) 

Page  286.  Average  yearly  earnings  of  women  in  retail  stores, 
$313.26;  average  weekly  wages,  $6.02. 

Page  288.  Of  2.276  reporting,  1,404,  or  61.8  per  cent,  contrib¬ 
uted  all  their  earnings  to  the  family  fund;  796,  or  34.9  per  cent, 
contributed  part;  and  76,  or  3.3  per  cent,  contributed  none. 

Page  315.  Of  1,219  laundry  workers  investigated,  49  got  less 
than  $4  a  week. 

256  received  less  than  $5  a  week. 

558  received  less  than  6  a  week. 

772  received  less  than  7  a  week. 

949  received  less  than  8  a  week. 

Only  270  received  $8  or  more 

Page  256.  The  average  weekly  earnings  for  girls  in  candy 
factories  was  $4.93.  The  1,694  reporting  averaged  11  cents  per 
hour.  (Page  257.) 

Page  250.  Twenty  per  cent  of  all  women  workers  over  21 
years  old  received  less  than  $6  a  week  in  miscellaneous  industries. 

Page  233.  “As  a  result  of  painstaking  study  of  actual  expendi¬ 
tures  of  391  families,  it  was  concluded  that  for  a  family  of  five 
persons  ‘the  task  of  making  both  ends  meet  is  too  severe  to  be 
successfully  accomplished  in  ordinary  circumstances  on  all  in¬ 
comes  under  $800,  without  a  lowering  of  the  standards  of  living 
below  the  normal  demands  of  health,  working  efficiency  and  social 
decency.’  ” 

Page  229.  Three  out  of  four  families  with  !er  $600 

were  underfed,  and  of  those  with  incomes  bef  id  $800, 

one  out  of  three  were  underfed. 


178 


Women  Workers  in  Other  Countries. 

No.  women  Per  cent  of 

. *900  JSS3K-  allf4e4maI'”- 

rJeiglum  .  1900  048  999  oo  i 

Pranpprk  .  353)980  28^2 

Holland  .  .  tsoo  0 

^nvgary  . 1900  2,668)697  27)6 

* .  1901  5,284,064  32.4 

Russia  .  1897  5,276,112  8  4 

Switzerland  .  1888  435’?90 

United  Kingdom  .  1901  6, SIMM  §4  o 

—Josiah  Strong,  The  Gospel  of  the  Kingdom)  November  1908 

Th1se  figures  are  ten  years  old  and  are  largely 
increased  through  increased  introduction  of  machinery.  S  y 

11.  Organized  Labor. 

(a)  EXTENT  AND  NUMBERS. 


In  the  United  States  and  Canada. 

(Social  Democratic  Manual,  1912.) 

A.  F.  of  B.,  1910 . 

W.  F.  of  Miners,  1911 . ) 

Independent  Railroad  Unions,  1 9 i i .  . . . .’ . 

Other  Independent  Unions,  1911 . 


1,562,112 

49,963 

289,186 

723,739 


Total  . 

In  Foreign  Countries. 

Country 

Germany  . 

France  . .*!!!!.'!!!!!!!! 

Great  Britain  and  Ireland . 

Austria  . 

Italy  . !  ) !  ! ! . 

Sweden  . .!.!.!!!!! 

Netherlands  . .!!!.!!!!! . 

Belgium  . !.!.].!. 

Denmark  . ..!!!!!!!!!)! 

Switzerland  . !!!!!!!!.'!!!! 

Other  European  countries . ...!!!!! 

Summary 


2.625.000 


Date 

Members 

1910 

2,688,144 

1910 

977,35# 

1911 

2,426,592 

1910 

400,565 

1910 

167,256 

1910 

148,649 

1910 

143,850 

1909 

138,928 

1910 

131,563 

1909 

110.749 

230,309 

Summary. 

Total  in  Foreign  Countries . 

Total  in  United  States  and  Canada^.  . 


7,563,955 

2,625,000 


(b) 


Grand  total  . 10,188.955 

GROWTH  OF  SOCIALISM  IN  THE  TRADES  UNION 
MOVEMENT. 


The  growth  of  Socialist  sentiment  in  the  organized  labor 
movement  of  America  is  widespre*ad  and  rapid.  Moreover,  it 
seems  to  be  increasing  in  the  rate  of  its  growth. 

The  Western  Federation  of  Miners,  one  of  the  strongest  and 
most  aggressive  labor  organizations  in  America,  has  stood  for 
years  committed  to  political  Socialism.  The  organizations  of 
brewers,  hat  and  cap  makers,  bakers  and  a  few  others  have  also 
definitely  endorsed  Socialism. 


The  United  Mine  Workers  of  America,  numbering  nearly 
300,000,  have  also  practically  endorsed  Socialism  in  the  reso¬ 
lution  in  which  they  declare  for  the  collective  ownership  of 
industry. 

Besides  this  the  Socialist  party,  of  course,  has  numerous 
individual  adherents  in  every  union.  Their  number  is  growing. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  trades  unions,  representing  more 
than  a  half  million  organized  workers,  are  more  or  less  definitely 
committted  to  political  Socialism  already. 

The  Socialist  sentiment  is  growing  rapidly  as  indicated  not 
only  by  the  above,  but  by  other  occurrences  in  the  union  move¬ 
ment,  for  example:  The  United  Mines  Workers’  Union,  besides 
having  endorsed  Socialism,  has  elected  as  vice-president  a  party 
Socialist.  Its  present  as  well  as  its  former  president  votes  the 
Socialist  ticket. 


The  Cigar  Makers’  Union,  the  one  to  which  Mr.  Samuel 
Gompers,  a  most  persistent  opponent  of  Socialism,  belongs,  has 
elected  a  number  of  Socialists  to  official  positions.  Mr.  James 


179 


O’Connell,  for  many  years  president  of  the  Machinists’  Union 
and  one  of  Mr.  Gompers’  most  valued  lieutenants,  was  defeated 
by  a  Socialist,  Mr.  W.  H.  Johnson. 

Socialism  and  Trade  Unionism, 

(From  “Socialism  in  Theory  and  Practice,”  by  Morris  Hillquit, 
page  236.  The  Macmillan  Company.) 

Trade  unionism  and  socialism  have  a  common  origin,  and 
are  both  the  products  and  expression  of  an  advanced  stage  of 
the  class  struggle  between  capitalism  and  labor. 

In  England,  France,  Italy,  Australia  and  the  United  States 
the  modern  trade  union  movement  preceded  the  Socialist  move¬ 
ment;  in  Germany,  Austria  and  Russia  the  trade  unions  are 
largely  the  creation  of  Socialists,  while  in  Sweden,  Norway, 
Denmark,  Belgium  and  Holland  both  movements  developed 
almost  simultaneously.  In  the  Anglo-Saxon  countries  the  trade 
unions  have  developed  a  greater  numerical  strength  than  the 
Socialist  parties,  while  in  the  countries  of  continental  Europe 
the  reverse  is  trire. 


(Same,  page  237.) 

Stating  the  proposition  in  general  and  broad  terms,  the  trade 
unions  fight  the  special  and  economic  battles  of  the  working¬ 
men,  while  the  Socialist  party  represents  the  general  interest  of 
the  wage  earners  in  the  field  of  politics.  But  on  closer  exami¬ 
nation  the  distinction  is  by  no  means  as  clear  and  definite  as  it 
seems  at  first  sight.” 

*  *  * 


(Same,  page  239.) 

The  trade  unions  of  continental  Europe  fully  recognize  this 
political  phase  of  their  movement,  and  they  frankly  ally  them¬ 
selves  with  the  Socialist  parties  of  their  countries  in  all  political 
campaigns.  In  England  the  trade  organizations  stubbornly 
maintain  the  attitude  of  non-interference  in  politics  until  such 
time  as  they  found  their  very  existence  menaced  by  the  legis¬ 
lative  and  judicial  powers  of  the  realm.  Then  they  constituted 
themselves  into  a  political  Labor  party  which  declared  for  inde¬ 
pendent  working-class  politics  and  adopted  a  radical  program 
of  political  labor  reforms. 

The  only  large  body  of  trade  unions  which,  at  least  to  some 
extent,  still  upholds  the  fiction  of  political  indifference,  is  that 
represented  by  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  and  that 
fiction  is  becoming  so  incongruous  as  to  involve  the  organiza¬ 
tion  in  the  most  ludicrous  'contradictions. 

But  even  that  is  rapidly  changing.  *  *  * 

In  the  United  States,  Socialism  is  making  its  way  among  the 
trade  unionists  slowly  but  steadily. 

(c)  WOMEN’S  TRADE  UNION  ORGANIZATIONS. 

(From  Senate  Document  No.  645,  Vol.  X,  page  11.) 

Organization  among  working  women,  contrary  to  the  gen¬ 
eral  impression,  is  not  new.  Women,  from  the  beginning  of  the 
trades  union  movement  in  this  country,  have  occupied  an  im¬ 
portant  place  in  the  ranks  of  organized  labor.  For  eighty  years 
and  over  women  wage  earners  in  America  have  formed  trade 
unions  and  gone  on  strike  for  shorter  hours,  better  pay  and 
improved  conditions.  The  American  labor  movement  had  its 
real  beginning  about  the  year  1825.  In  that  same  year  the 
tailoresses  of  New  York  formed  a  union. 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  state  definitely  that  organiza¬ 
tion  among  working  women  began  in  any  particular  year,  but 
certainly  it  is  true  that  women  wage  earners  attracted  little 
attention  on  account  of  organized  activity  before  the  year  1825. 

Beginning  about  that  time  women  have  gradually  found 
places  for  themselves  in  industrial  life.  The  increased  intro- 


180 

duction  of  women  into  industry  has  resulted  in  problems  more 
or  less  peculiar  to  women  wage  earners,  and  since  1825  they 
have  formed  special  organizations  in  an  effort  to  meet  their  owt 
needs.  From  that  time  to  the  present  unionism  among  women 
has  steadily  increased  in  importance.* 

The  first  women  to  enter  factory  employment  were  native 
Americans,  and  since  the  greater  part  of  machine  labor  was 
then  found  in  cotton  mills  the  women  unionists  of  the  first 
period  were  largely  New  England  girls,  generally  the  daughters 
of  farmers.  One  of  the  first  important  strikes  among  cotton 
mill  girls  occurred  at  Dover,  N.  H.,  in  1828,  and  involved 
between  300  and  400  women.  Six  years  later  800  women  were 
on  a  strike  at  the  same  place,  and  by  means  of  a  trade  union 
resisted  for  some  time  a  reduction  of  wages.  The  Dover  diffi¬ 
culties  furnished  examples  of  most  of  the  trade  union  problems 
and  tactics  familiar  to  labor  unionists  today.  Against  reduction 
of  wages,  monthly  payments  and  exasperating  rules  the  Dover 
girls  furnished  organized  resistance  and  ^ve  expression  to 
their  complaints  by  means  of  street  parades;  protest  meetings, 
placards,  poetry  and  widely  published  resolutions.  They  ap¬ 
pointed  committees  to  secure  the  support  of  workers  in  other 
towns  and  raised  funds  to  relieve  the  necessities  of  the  strikers. 
When  employers  advertised  for  workers  to  take  the  place  of  the 
strikers  the  women  strikers  answered  in  turn  through  the 
columns  of  the  newspapers. 

Number  and  Extent  of  Women’s  Labor  Organizations. 

(Senate  Document  No.  645,  Vol.  X,  page  136.) 

Per  ct.  of 


No.  of 

Female 

women 
to  total 

unions. 

m’b’ship.  m’b’ship. 

Bookbinders  . 

3,628 

40 

Boot  and  shoe  workers . 

.  40 

5,443 

3,490 

17 

Cigar  makers  . . . 

10 

Garment  makers  (men’s) . 

. .  133 

17,212 

40 

Garment  makers  (women’s) .  . . . 

.  13 

1,217 

70 

Glove  makers  . 

652 

58 

Hat  and  cap  makers . 

.  14 

5,385 

54 

Musicians  . . 

. .  60 

1,323 

7 

Printers  . 

.  17 

621 

3 

Saleswomen  . 

.  42 

1,308 

4 

Laundry  workers  . 

3,229 

75 

Textile  workers  . 

6,142 

45 

Tobacco  workers  . 

5,020 

72 

Waitresses  . 

.  22 

1,928 

5 

Miscellaneous  . 

.  28 

7,391 

Total  . . 

.  546 

63,989 

3 

182 


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183 


Among  those  engaged  in  the  promotion  of  unionism  among 
women  there  is  a  general  belief  that  in  those  organizations 
which  have  survived  the  recent  period  of  depression  the  women 
members  take  more  interest  in  their  unions  than  ever  before. 
Their  interest  is  not  yet  by  any  means  general  and  keen,  but 
there  seems  a  growing  consciousness  on  the  part  of  women  that 
action. 

they  need  the  advantages  which  can  be  secured  only  by  united 

*  *  *  Through  this  increased  interest  in  the  management  of 
her  own  union  the  woman  grows  to  a  wider  point  of  view  and 
an  interest  in  questions  affecting  her  fellow  unionists  and  the 
workers  as  a  body. 

(From  Senate  Document  No.  645,  Vol.  X,  page  217.) 

(d)  STRIKES  AND  LOCKOUTS. 

Following  is  taken  from  the  United  States  Census  Report  of 
1906,  same  being  the  last  published.  The  bulletins  subsequently 
published  do  not  mention  anything  further: 

Average  duration  of  strikes  per  establishment  was  25.4  days, 
and  of  lockouts  84.6  days. 

The  strikes  or  lockouts  do  not,  of  course,  always  result  in 
the  closing  of  the  establishments  affected,  but  in  strikes,  the 
average  closing  was  20.1  days,  and  in  lockouts  40.4  days. 

Strikes  of  less  than  one  day  are  omitted  and  of  the  strikers 
the  average  number  of  women  is  about  10  per  cent. 

Duration  of  strikes  or  lockouts  should  not  be  considered  a 
measure  of  time  lost  by  employes,  because  a  few,  and  possibly 
all,  employes  may  secure  work  elsewhere  during  the  disturbance 
or  a  temporary  closing  of  an  establishment,  but  a  strike  or  lock¬ 
out  may  mean  a  prolongation  of  the  working  season  or  more 
regular  work  during  the  remainder  of  the  year,  and  thus  as 
many  days  may  be  worked  within  the  year  as  though  no  strike 
or  lockout  had  occurred. 

Statistics  of  Strikes  and  Lockouts  from  1894  to  1905  Inclusive. 


Days  Until  Strikers 

Employes 

Were  Re-Employed 

Thrown 

or  Places 

Out  of 

Establish¬ 

Days  Filled  by 

No.  of 

Work  by- 

Year. 

Strikes. 

ments. 

Closed.  Others. 

Strikers. 

Strike. 

1894. . . 

.  .1,349 

8,196 

211,017  265,457 

505,049 

660,425 

1895 .  .  . 

.  .1,215 

6,973 

100,893  142,851 

285,742 

392,403 

1896. . . 

.  .1,026  ' 

5,462 

94,351  119,870 

182,813 

241,170 

1897.  .  . 

.  .1,078 

8,492 

175,071  ‘  232,443 

332,570 

408,391 

1898. '.  . 

.  .1,056 

3,809 

53,833  85,269 

182,067 

249,002 

1899.  .  . 

,  .  .1,797 

11,317 

67,018  171,655 

308,267 

417,072 

1900.  .  . 

.  .  .1,779 

9,248 

77,895  213,038 

399,656 

505,066 

1901.  .  . 

.  .2,924 

10,908 

90,688  317,939 

396,280 

543,386 

1902.  .  , 

.  .  .3,162 

14,248 

183,032  362,398 

553,143 

659,792 

1903.  . 

.  .  .3,494 

20,248 

239,885  588,831 

631,682 

656,055 

1904.  .  . 

.  .2,307 

10,202 

123,319  341,898 

375,754 

517,211 

1905.  . 

.  .  .2,077 

8,292 

53,758  191,880 

176,337 

221,686 

Lock¬ 

Employes 

Employes 

outs. 

Establish-  Locked 

Thrown 

Year. 

ments. 

Out. 

Out. 

1894.  . 

.  875 

28,548 

29,619 

1895 .  . 

.  370 

12,754 

14,785 

1896 .  . 

.  51 

3,675 

7,668 

1897 

.  171 

7,651 

7,763 

1898.  . 

.  164 

11,038 

14,217 

1899.  . 

.  323 

14,698 

14,817 

1900. . 

. 2,281 

46,562 

62,652 

1901 . 

.  451 

16,257 

20.457 

1902 . 

. 1,304 

30,304 

31.715 

1903 .  . 

. 3,288 

112,332 

131,779 

1904. . 

. 2,316 

44,908 

56,604 

1905. . 

. 1,255 

68,474 

80,748 

Summary  of  Strikes,  1881  to  1905,  by  Causes. 


184 


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185 


(e)  LABOR  DECISIONS  AND  INJUNCTIONS.  • 

(From  the  Appeal’s  “Arsenal  of  Facts,”  1914.) 

“Refusing  to  haul  cars  a  conspiracy.” — T.,  A.  &  N.  M.  Ry. 
vs.  Pennsylvania  Co.,  54  Fed.  Rep.  730,  April  3,  1893.  Taft, 
circuit  judge. 

“Quitting  work  is  criminal.” — Same,  April  3,  1893.  Taft, 
circuit  judge. 

“A  workman  considered  ‘under  control’.” — T.,  A.  &  N.  M. 
Ry.  vs.  Pennsylvania  Co.  et  al.,  54  Fed.  Rep.  746,  March  25, 
1893.  Ricks,  circuit  judge. 

“Serving  of  injunction  notice  unnecessary.” — In  re  Lennon, 
1 66  U.  S.  548.  Brown,  judge. 

“The  blicklist  lawful.” — N.  Y.  C.  &  St.  L.  Ry.  Co.  vs. 
Schaffer,  65  Ohio  414,  Jan.  21,  1902. 

“Efforts  to  unionize  shop  unlawful.” — Loewe  et  al.  vs.  Lawlor 
et  al.,  208  U.  S.  274,  Feb.  3,  1908. 

“Contract  work  to  union  house  is  void.” — State  vs.  Toole,  26 
Mont.  22. 

“Constitutional  to  require  men  to  leave  union.” — People  vs. 
Harry  Marcus,  185  N.  Y.  257,  May  25,  1906. 

“Union  labor  has  no  right  to  conduct  a  strike.” — Alfred  W. 
Booth  &  Co.  vs.  Burgess  et  al.,  65  Atlantic  Reporter  226,  Nov. 
26,  1906. 

“Unlawful  to  induce  non-union  men  to  quit  work.” — Enter¬ 
prise  Foundry  Co.  vs.  Iron  Moulders’  Union,  112  N.  W.  685, 
July  1,  1907. 

“The  unfair  list  forbidden.” — Wilson  et  al.,  232  Ill.  389,  Feb. 
20,  1908. 

“Employer  has  right  to  bar  out  unions.” — Flaccus  vs.  Smith, 
199  Pa.  St.  128. 

“Anti-trust  act  applies  to  labor  unions  as  well  as  to  com¬ 
binations  of  capitalists.” — U.  S.  vs.  Workingmen’s  Amalgamated 
Council,  54  Fed.  Rep.  994;  Loewe  vs.  Lawlor,  208  U.  S.  274. 

“The  Boycott  is  unlawful.” — Loewe  vs.  Lawlor,  208  U.  S. 

274. 

“Members  of  labor  unions  liable  to  threefold  damages  for 
injuries  in  business  or  property  sustained  by  individuals  or 
firms  by  reason  of  a  boycott.” — Loewe  vs.  Lawlor,  208  U.  S.  274. 

“A  combination  of  men  to  secure  or  compel  the  employment 
of  none  but  union  men  is  unlawful.” — U.  S.  vs.  Workingmen’s 
Amalgamated  Council,  54  Fed.  Rep.  994. 

“Limiting  check  payment  unconstitutional.” — Indiana  su¬ 
preme  court,  Nathan  G.  Dixon,  Appt.,  vs.  James  H.  Poe,  60  L. 
R.  A.  308,  Nov.  25,  1902. 

“Unlawful  to  fix  wages  by  law.” — New  York  supreme  court, 
People  ex  rel.  Wm.  J.  Rodgers,  Respt.,  vs.  Bird  S.  Coler,  Appt., 
166  N.  Y.,  52  L.  R.  A.  814. 

“Protection  of  laborer  not  required.” — New  York  court  of 
appeals,  Sarah  Knisley,  Respt.,  vs.  Pascal  P.  Pratt  et  al.,  Appts., 
148  N.  Y.  362,  32  L.  A.  R.  367. 

“No  extra  pay  for  extra  hours.” — 'New  York  court  of  appeals, 
People,  Respt.,  vs.  James  R.  Phyfe,  Appt.,  Jan.  17,  1893. 

“Employer  not  responsible  for  death  of  employe.” — Circuit 
court  of  appeals,  eighth  circuit,  March  19,  1900.  Westland  vs. 
Gold  Coin  Mines  Co.,  101  Fed.  Rep.  59,  64,  65  and  66. 

“Labor  check  payments  are  legal.”— Massachusetts  supreme 
judicial  court.  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts  vs.  Josiah 
Perry,  14  L.  R.  A.  326. 

“No  remedy  for  labor  except  personal  suit.” — Massachusetts 
supreme  judicial  court.  Diannah  Worthington  et  al.,  Appts.,  vs. 
James  Warring  et  al.,  157  Mass.  421. 

“Employers  need  not  furnish  doctor  to  injured.” — Massachu¬ 
setts  supreme  judicial  court.  Alexander  Davis  by  next  friend 
vs.  William  H.  Forbes,  171  Mass.  548. 


186 


-  “Employers  not  liable  for  injuries.” — Massachusetts  supreme 
court.  Wm.  O’Mailly  vs.  South  Boston  Gaslight  Co.,  158  Mass 
135. 

“Altering  contract  is  legal  for  employers.”— Illinois  supreme 
court.  Richard  Pensey,  Appt.,  vs.  People  of  Illinois,  17  L  R 
A.,  853.  ' 

“Employers  need  not  recommend  satisfactory  employes.” _ 

Illinois  -supreme  court,  C.,  C.,  C.  &  L.  Ry.  Co.,  Appt., '  vs. 
Charles  Jenkins,  174  Ill.  398. 

“Legal  to  jail  a  man  a  month  without  trial.” — Oregon  su¬ 
preme  court,  Longshore  Printing  &  Publishing  Co.,  Appt.,  vs. 
George  H.  Howell  et  al.,  26  Ore.  527. 

“The  right  to  blacklist  upheld.” — Kentucky  court  of  appeals, 
John  Hundley,  Appt.,  vs.  L.  &  N.  Ry.  Co.,  105  Ky.  162. 

“Any  wilful  attempt  of  employes  of  a  railroad  in  the  hands 
of  a  receiver  to  impede  or  hinder  the  operation  of  the  road  is 
contempt  of  court.” — Thomas  vs.  C.  N.  O.  &  T.  P.  Ry.  Co.,  62 
Fed.  Rep.  803.  Taft,  circuit  judge. 

“To  instigate  a  strike  on  a  road  in  the  hands  of  a  receiver  is 
unlawful  and  a  contempt  of  court.” — Thomas  vs.  C.  N.  O.  &  T. 
Ry.  Co.,  62  Fed.  Rep.  803.  Taft,  circuit  judge. 

“A  sympathetic  -strike  is  an  unlawful  conspiracy  by  reason 
of  its  purpose,  whether  such  purpose  is  effected  by  means  usu¬ 
ally  lawful  or  otherwise.” — Thomas  vs.  C.  N.  O.  &  T.  Ry.  Co., 
62  Fed.  Rep.  803.  Taft,  circuit  judge. 

“Any  obstructing  -or  retarding  the  mails  by  strikers  is  an 
unlawful  conspiracy  in  violation  of  Section  3975,  Revised  Stat¬ 
utes,  although  the  obstruction  is  effected  by  merely  quitting 
employment.” — Thomas  vs.  C.  N.  O.  &  T.  P.  Ry.  Co.,  62  Fed. 
Rep.  803.  Taft,  circuit  judge. 

“A  law  forbidding  discrimination  against  an  employe  because 
of  his  membership  in  a  labor  union,  and  making  it  a  misde¬ 
meanor  for  an  employer  to  discharge  an  employe  because  of 
membership  in  a  labor  union,  is  unconstitutional.” — Adair  case, 
208  U.  S.  161. 

(f)  OLD  PARTIES  SAY  UNIONS  ARE  TRUSTS. 

A  Bill  to  Exempt  Labor  Unions  From  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust 
Law.  Defeated  in  the  Senate  June  9,  1910. 

For.  Against.  Dodged. 


Republicans  . .  6  32  23 

Democrats  .  10  2  19 

Total  .  16  34  42 


(g)  THE  CATHOLIC  UNIONS  OF  GERMANY. 

{From  “The  Church  and  Trade  Unions  in  Germany,”  by  Dr 
A.  Erdmann,  Member  of  the  German  Reichstag.) 

The  labor  movement  in  some  of  the  European  countries  i; 
not  always  united.  In  some  of  them,  especially  in  Germany 
we  find  a  so-called  Christian  labor  movement  existing  quite 
apart  from  the  general  or  socialist  labor  movement.  Repre 
sentatives  of  the  Catholic  church  and  of  the  Clerical  party,  whief 
is  known  in  Germany  as  the  Center  or  “Centrum”  party  (then 
representatives  have  formerly  sat  in  the  “center”  of  the  Reichs¬ 
tag),  are  collectively  responsible  for  the  formation  of  this  seces 
sionist  movement.  Efforts  have  of  late  been  made  to  establisl 
a  similar  movement  in  the  United  States  of  America  and  ir 
other  countries.  Certain  spokesmen  of  the  Clerical  party,  o 
which  Mr.  Geisberts  for  instance,  who  is  a  member  of  th<; 
Center  party  in  the  Reichstag,  is  one,  have  indeed  been  actively 
engaged  in  such  a  campaign  in  the  United  States  with  a  viev 
to  preparing  public  opinion  and  to  inducing  the  workers  to  \ 
move  in  the  direction  prescribed  by  them.  Certain  preparation: 
have  been  completed  since  and  will  some  day  be  followed  b;j 


187 


7/ 

e  formation  of  social  circles  and  Christian  labor  organiza- 
>ns.  The  facts  mentioned  are  probably  responsible  for  the 
eat  number  of  inquiries  which  have  reached  the  “Generalkom- 
ission  der  Gewerkschafter  Deutschlands”  (the  national  center 
•  federation  of  German  trade  unions)  from  all  parts  of  the 
nited  States,  asking  for  information  respecting  the  Christian 
jdes  unions  in  Germany. 

The  Catholic  Church  in  Germany,  at  a  comparatively  early 
age,  commenced  to  give  attention  to  the  workers.  The  Cath¬ 
ie  Journeymen’s  Association  was  established  immediately  after 
e  1848  revolution  in  Germany.  The  founder  of  this  organi- 
tion  was  a  Catholic  priest,  named  Kolping,  who  had  two 
incipal  aims  in  view:  to  improve  the  material  and  social  posi- 
yn  of  the  journeymen,  and,  at  the  same  time,  keep  them  away 
om  the  lively  political  movement  of  that  period  and  protect 
em  against  the  possible  renunciation  of  the  Catholic  faith. 

After  long  and  bitter  disputes  the  Catholics  played  what 
rey  thought  must  be  the  winning  card;  this  was  no  more  nor 
ss  than  the  inter-denominational  system,  under  which  a  union 
lould  be  formed  accepting  both  Catholics  and  Protestants  into 
3  folds. 

*  *  * 

The  Catholic  politicians  chose  this  form  of  organization,  in 
*der  to  gain  the  support  of  the  Protestant  workers  and  to  allay 
ly  suspicion  that  same  may  be  out  and  out  Catholic.  At  any 
ite  they  were  not  afraid  that  the  Protestant  influence  would 
irercome  that  of  the  Catholic  in  the  organization.  The  Prot- 
>tant  Church  had  not  such  a  hold  over  its  workers  as  the 
atholic;  the  Protestant  workers,  far  as  politics  are  con- 

irned,  follow  their  own  inclinations.  It  was  a  foregone  con- 
.usion  that  the  number  of  Protestant  workers  joining  the 
Christian”  unions,  far  from  increasing, v would  become  propor- 
onately  smaller.  And  that  is  what  happened.  Not  a  tenth  part 
f  the  members  of  the  “Christian”  unions  are  Protestants;  nine- 
;nths  are  Catholics  and  typical  “center”  men.  The  name  “in¬ 
n-denominational”  is  only  a  cloak  thrown  over  an  organization 
3  Catholic  as  anything  that  has  ever  hailed  from  the  Vatican, 
he  “Christian”  organizations  have  been  established  by  the 
Center”  for  the  purpose  of  defending  the  latter  against  the 
ocialist  Workers’  Movement. 

The  “Christian”  trade  unions  were  too  weak  in  numbers  as 
rell  as  financially  to  enter  upon  an  independent  wages  move- 
lent.  If  anything  was  to  be  done  it  could  only  be  done  by 
maglamating  with  the  strong  Socialist  unions.  So  we  see  in 
iany  cases  since  1911  both  organizations  working  together,  and 
:  must  be  admitted  that  the  “Christian”  unions  have  conducted 
hemselves  very  creditably  and  soberly.  Judging  by  how  things, 
re  shaping,  the  possibility  of  both  organizations  amalgamating 
»  not  so  very  remote. 

It  must  be  remarked  that  the  more  strictly  ecclesiastic  fac- 
ions  among  the  German  Catholics  were,  from  the  outset,  op- 
osed  to  the  establishment  of  the  “Christian”  trade  unions.  The 
ery  fact  of  combining  with  the  Protestants  seemed,  in  itself,  to 
onstitute  a  great  menace  to  the  salvation  of  the  Catholic 
/orker. 

The  resistance  offered  by  the  strict  Catholic  body  grew  as 
he  “Christian”  trade  unions  associated  themselves  with  the 
Qovements  of  the  Socialist  unions;  as  they  steered  more  and 
aore  towards  the  independent  labor  movement,  and  came  out 
vith  the  demand  to  manage  the  economic  questions  concerning 
heir  members,  to  their  own  liking  and  upon  their  own  responsi- 
jility,  and  to  lay  aside  all  spiritual  advice  and  meddling. 

*  *  * 

The  advanced  Catholic  body  then  drew  the  attention  of  the 


188 


bishops  to  the  new  movement,  and  these  ecclesiastics  sent  out 
a  notice  to  the  clerics  in  1900  in  which  the  “Christian”  unions 
were  described  as  organizations  running  counter  to  the  doctrines 
of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  therefore  quite  unsuitable  for  the 
Catholic  worker.  If  Catholic  workers  wanted  to  look  after  their 
economic  interests,  they  might  form  sections  for  the  different 
callings  in  their  unions,  through  which  they  might  act — under  the 
guidance  of  an  ecclesiastical  management — for  the  betterment 
of  their  worldly  lot.  That  was  the  long  and  short  of  the  judg¬ 
ment  passed  upon  the  “Christian”  trade  unions  by  the  German 
bishops.  Since  the  condemnation  of  the  “Christian”  unions  by 
the  bishops,  the  strict  Catholics  have  strained  every  nerve  for 
the  establishing  of  the  trade  sections  prescribed.  Strict  Cath-  | 
olic  trade  union  movements  were  conducted  parallelly  with  the  ; 
“Christian”  trade  union  movements,  the  Catholics  boasting  that  I 
they  were  working  in  complete  harmony  with  the  doctrines  of  i 
the  Church  and  the  injunctions  of  the  Pope,  to  a  Divine  end.  j 

The  two  sections  of  the  Catholic  Trade  Union  Movement  ’ 
have  fought  each  other  up  to  the  present  in  most  vigorous  man-  : 
ner.  Each  section  has  tried  its  best  to  win  the  greater  favor  in 
the  eyes  of  the  Bishops  and  the  Pope,  and  wherever  possible  to 
bring  about  the  destruction  of  its  opponent;  each  claiming  to 
be  endowed  with  the  highest  authority. 

What  displeased  the  Church  in  regard  to  the  “Christian” 
trade  unions,  was  not  only  the  fact  that  the  Catholic  and  Prot¬ 
estant  organizations  worked  in  conjunction  one  with  the  other, 
and  laid  claims  to  a  certain  independence  in  economic  move¬ 
ments,  but  also  the  fact  that  same  were  prepared  to  resort  to 
strikes  if  necessary.  The  Catholic  moralist  does  not  repudiate 
strike  action  in  principle,  but  describes  same  as  being  accom¬ 
panied  by  countless  dangers  for  the  worker  and  his  family,  as 
well  as  the  community  at  large.  The  Church  tries  rather  to 
dissuade  the  men  from  striking,  than  to  forbid  them.  It  is,  at 
any  rate,  requested  that  the  workers  follow  the  advice  of  the 
Church  when  contemplating  any  struggle  which  seems  likely 
to  assume  serious  dimensions.  In  order  to  give  an  idea  of  the 
Church’s  attitude  towards  the  workers’  movement,  and  espe¬ 
cially  to  strikes,  a  few  passages  from  the  Encylical  relating  to 
Trades  Unions  are  reproduced  here: 

“Whatever  the  Christian  does,  even  in  the  disposition  of  : 
earthly  matters,  the  Heavenly  treasures  must  not  be  lost  sight 
of.  He  should,  rather,  do  everything  according  to  the  princi¬ 
ples  of  the  Christian  Philosophy,  always  aiming  at  the  highest 
of  all  treasures.  All  his  actions,  as  far  as  they  conform  with 
the  nature  and  Divine  laws  or  deviate  from  same,  are  subject 
to  the  judgment  of  the  Church. 

“Those  who  inividually  or  collectively  profess  to  be  Chris¬ 
tians,  and  who  wish  to  live  up  to  their  faith,  must  not  stir  up  j 
strife  or  animosity  among  the  different  classes  of  society,  but 
must  rather  strive  for  peace  and  brotherly  love. 

“The  social  questions  and  those  questions,  so  closely  bound 
up  in  same,  concerning  character  and  times  of  work,  payment  j 
of  wages,  and  strikes,  are  not  questions  of  a  merely  economic  i 
character,  and  should  not,  therefore,  be  counted  among  those  i 
questions  which  can  be  settled  independent  of  the  Episcopal 
authorities,  but  on  the  contrary,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  social  : 
question  is  a  question  of  morals  and  religion,  and  should  there-  ; 
fore  be  solved,  primarily,  according  to  the  moral  and  religious 
philosophies.” 

The  Catholic  worker  shall  live  at  peace  with  those  in  other  | 
stations  of  life,  i.  e.,  the  employers,  and  shall  not  attempt  to  seek  j 
the  settlement  of  questions  concerning  wages  and  working  times, 
except  with  the  cognisance  and  advice  of  the  Church  dignitaries  1  I 
Could  anyone  possibly  conceive  a  more  pernicious  attack  upon 


189 


/ 

the  people’s  right  of  settling  their  own  questions  for  themselves? 
Can  a  movement  which  will  submit  to  such  an  attack  dare  to 
sail  under  the  name  of  Workers’  Organization?  Can  one  depend 
upon  such  an  organization  as  gives  itself  completely  into  the 
hands  of  a  higher  power,  to  stand  firm  and  resolute  by  its 
brother  workers  in  the  hour  of  emergency?  Must  one  not  come 
to  the  conclusion  that,  under  the  influence  brought  to  bear  upon 
them  by  their  acknowledged  ecclesiastical  leaders,  they  will  turn 
their  backs  ignominiously  upon  their  fighting  comrades  in  order 
to  maintain  peace  with  those  in  other  spheres  of  life? 

*  *  * 

The  answer  to  these  questions  may  be  found  in  the  miners’ 
strike  in  Rhineland-Westphalia  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1912. 
As  long  ago  as  1910  the  Ehineland-Westphalian  miners  had 
drawn  up  a  plan  for  a  wages  movement.  The  Socialists,  the 
Liberals,  and  the  Polish  Miners’  Union  had  agreed  to  approach 
the  sixteen  mine  owners  with  certain  demands,  the  most  import¬ 
ant  among  which  was  one  for  an  increase  in  wages.  The  wages 
had  fallen  very  considerably  since  1907;  the  cost  of  living,  on 
the  other  hand,  had  gone  up  considerably.  The  miners  de¬ 
manded  no  more  'than  a  levelling  up  of  the  wages  with  the  cost 
of  living.  The  aforementioned  unions  made  overtures  to  the 
Unions  of  the  Christian  miners,  which,  however,  made  pretexts 
for  not  joining  them.  This  adversely  affected  the  economic 
situation  so  that  the  remainder  of  the  organizations  refused 
to  proceed  further  in  the  movement;  not,  however,  because  they 
considered  the  reasons  put  forward  by  the  “Christian”  trade 
unions  plausible,  but  rather  because  they  looked  upon  the 
closest  combination  among  the  miners  as  being  indispensable 
to  the  successful  carrying  through  of  their  demands.  The  end 
of  1911  saw  a  repetition  of  this  occurence.  Unity  once  more 
characterized  the  relations  existing  between  the  three  organi¬ 
zations — the  Socialist,  the  Liberal,  and  the  Polish — in  the  move¬ 
ment  for  higher  wages.  Once  more  the  “Christian”  union 
backed  opt  and  the  movement  was  postponed.  The  leaders  of 
the  three  unions  had,  in  the  meantime  found  out  that  the  object 
of  the  leaders  of  the  “Christian”  unions  was  to  frustrtae  the 
attempts  and  to  arrest  the  progress  of  the  miners.  The  “Christ¬ 
ian”  leaders  relied  upon  the  strength  of  their  organization, 
which  numbered  some  45,000  in  Ruhrbecken,  as  compared  with 
the  80,000  belonging  to  the  Socialist  and  some  thousands  be¬ 
longing  to  the  Polish  and  Liberal  unions.  They  considered 
themselves  to  be  masters  of  the  situation,  and  looked  upon 
themselves  as  being  able  to  cripple  every  wages  movement,  and 
hold  the  destiny  of  the  German  miners  in  their  hands.  After 
careful  weighing  up  of  the  “pros”  and  “cons,”  notice  of  strike 
was  given  on  the  10th  of  March.  This  step  was  not  taken  until 
all  possible  means  of  arriving  at  a  settlement  of  their  demands 
had  been  exhausted. 

Of  the  360,000  miners  employed  in  the  Rhineland- Westphalian 
pits,  220,000 — most  of  whom  were  under-ground  workers — soon 
found  themselves  on  strike.  The  “Christian”  leaders  saw  that 
their  plans  had  miscarried  and  that  numerous  members  of  their 
organization  had  taken  part  in  the  strike.  Then,  with  an  apalling 
contempt  for  the  truth  they  held  forth  upon  the  atrocities 
wrought  upon  those  who  were  willing  to  work  by  the  strikers. 
The  clerical  press  excreted  blood  and  thunder  stories  of  the 
violent  treatment  to  which  those  willing  to  work  would  be  sub¬ 
jected,  at  the  hands  of  the  strikers.  The  sole  object  of  this 
outcry  was  that  the  government  might  decide  to  send  police  and 


190 


soldiers  to  intimidate  the  miners  into  resuming  work.  The 
strike  was  to  be  broken  by  masses  of  armed  men,  by  the  mailed 
fist,  by  police  and  military  terrorism.  And  it  was  the  “Christian” 
trade  unions,  headed  by  Herr  Giesberts — a  man  well  known  in 
America — which  shrieked  for  the  police  and  the  soldiers,  through 
the  press,  and  incited  the  armed  mass  against  their  fellow  work¬ 
ers.  The  German  Government,  which  is  entirely  under  the  in¬ 
fluence  of  the  capitalists,  and  such  like  sworn  enemies  of  the 
people,  answered  the  cries  of  the  clerics,  and  dispatched  soldiers 
and  machine  guns  to  the  strike  district.  This  frightful  display 
of  force  had  the  effect  of  frightening  many  of  the  strikers  back 
to  their  work,  and  so  the  strike  had  to  be  declared  at  an  end 
b.y  the  leaders  of  the  movement,  after  same  had  lasted  ten  days. 
Now,  why  had  the  “Christian”  leaders  deported  themselves  so 
ignominiously?  In  1905  the  “Christian”  unions  had  stood  by  the 
other  unions  in  a  fourteen  days  strike,  honorably,  and  as  men. 
Why  this  contemptible  betrayal,  unparalleled  in  the  history  of 
the  German  Trade  Union  Movement,  some  years  later?  One 
reason  may  be  found  in  the  relation  of  the  “Christian”  unions 
to  the  Church. 

These  unions  had  already  been  compelled  to  pledge  them¬ 
selves  to  the  Bishops  (end  1910)  and  to  the  observance  of  the 
doctrines  of  the  Church  in  their  economic  movements,  before 
the  Papal  encylical  was  sent  out.  It  is  no  secret  that  social 
peace,  and  abstinence  from  great  economic  struggles  play  the 
chief  role  in  unions  of  this  category. 

Politics  also  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the  matter.  The 
“Center”  was  becoming  more  and  more  harassed  by  the  Social 
Democratic  Party  in  the  Rhineland-Westphalia  district,  and  in 
order  to  be  in  a  position  to  make  a  stand  against  same,  they 
were  obliged  to  obtain,  by  hook  or  by  crook,  the  support  of 
the  liberals  at  the  elections.  As  the  great  mine  owners  be¬ 
longed  to  the  Liberal  party  the  “Center”  dared  not  run  foul  of 
same.  Herr  Giesberts,  the  “Christian”  union  leader,  has  to 
thank  the  industrial  giants  and  their  “yellow”  pigmies  for  his 
seat  in  the  Reichstag  as  member  for  Essen. 

As  the  “Christian”  unions  have  no  further  chance  of  making 
any  conquests  among  the  independent  workers,  their  leaders, 
in  order  to  recover  lost  ground,  have  concentrated  their  atten¬ 
tion  upon  the  workers  engaged  in  public  services.  It  is  a  well 
known  fact  that  the  governments  of  Prussia,  Saxony,  and  other 
German  states  have  denied  the  right  of  combination  to  officials 
and  workers  engaged  in  state  service,  etc.,  or  at  least  taken 
special  care  that  state  employes  shall  not  belong  to  any  Social¬ 
ist  organization.  The  “Christian”  leaders  are  after  -these  work¬ 
ers,  as  the  concerns  under  the  control  of  the  State  are  contin¬ 
ually  increasing  in  extent  and  number,  and  it  would  be  a  good 
thing  to  be  able  to  fill  up  their  ranks  from  this  body  of  work¬ 
ers.  For  this  purpose  two  things  are  necessary:  First,  the 
permission  of  the  authorities  to  organize  the  workers  in  pub¬ 
lic  service  under  the  “Christian”  unions.  In  order  to  gain 
this  end  they  have  renounced  all  right  to  -strike,  which  is  equiv¬ 
alent  to  abandoning  their  right  to  combination.  Secondly,  in 
order  that  they  may  be  free  from  competition  they  want  the 
Government  to  assist  them,  by  forbidding  the  employes,  as 
before,  to  join  the  socialist  unions.  The  Government  i-s  pre¬ 
pared  to  grant  both  requests,  for  which  the  “Christian”  trade 
unions  had  to  promise  to  act  only  in  such  a  manner  as  would 
please  the  Government  and  conduce  to  their  interests.  These 
two  bodies  now  find  themselves  shoulder  to  shoulder  with 
mutual  interests  and  a  common  aim;  that  of  depriving  the  Ger¬ 
man  workers  of  the  right  to  combine,  of  their  right  to  strike, 
as  well  as  their  free  agency  in  matters  pertaining  to  their 
economic  development.  It  can  be  easily  understood  that  the 


/ 


m 

Government  are  doing  their  best  in  Rome  to  prevent  the  Pope 
from  forbidding  the  “Christian”  unions,  and  also  why  the 
“Christian”  trade  union  leaders  supported  the  Government  in 
their  efforts  to  smother  the  strike  by  means  of  soldiers  and 
police.  The  “Christian”  trade  union  leadens  belong  to  the  most 
malicious  agitators  against  the  right  of  combination  among 
the  workers  in  state  or  public  service.  Formerly  the  Bavarian 
railway  worker  was  at  liberty  to  join  what  organization  he 
thought  fit.  Upon  his  availing  himself  of  this  right  by  joining 
the  Railway  Workers’  Union,  a  union  conducted  on  sound  mod¬ 
ern  trade  union  principles,  along  came  the  leaders  of  the  Bavar¬ 
ian  “Center”  party  and  denounced  this  union  as  Social-Demo¬ 
cratic,  demanding  the  Bavarian  Government  to  forbid  same. 
The  Government  resisted  this  demand  for  a  long  time.  Upon 
the  leader  of  the  ‘^Center”  party  (Hentling)  becoming  Prime 
Minister,  the  fate  of  the  railway  union  was  sealed.  He  de¬ 
clared  that  he  was  driven  to  forbid  the  right  to  strike  under 
pain  of  the  union  being  dissolved;  but  this  did  not  help  him. 
The  Bavarian  Government  gave  notice  that  no  official  or  worker 
employed  by  the  Bavarian  Traffic  Ministry  would  in  future 
be  allowed  to  belong  to  the  said  Railway  Workers’  Union, 
and  in  order  to  give  full  effect  to  the  interdict  upon  this  union, 
the  Government  extended  same  to  the  Metal  Workers’  and 
Transport  Workers’  Unions;  both  socialistic  organizations. 
The  “Center”  press  and  the  whole  army  of  “Christian”  leaders 
shouted  for  joy  and  approbation  at  this  unheard  of  injustice, 
through  which  the  Bavarian  worker  was  to  be  deprived  of  his 
rights. 

Number  of  Members;  Additional  Members;  Annual  Income  and 


Total  Funds,  Absolute  and  Per  Member,  of  the  Central 


Federations  and  Christian  Trades  Unions  Dumig 
the  Years  1900,  1905,  1910,  1911. 


O  03 

°  6 

K 

t. 

U 
t-  « 

<U  ,Q 

■2  B 

0>  0Q 

rfS 

0)  t- 

a  ® 
?g  • 

Per 

ead 

M. 

cC'O  . 

ogS 

Per 

ead 

M. 

£  a; 

(-  o 

X 

x 

1900 

3  E 

O  4) 

G ' O 

Central  Federa¬ 

£ 

l-H 

H 

tions  . 

680,427 

9,454,075 

13.89 

7,745,901 

11.38 

Christian  Trade 

Unions  . 

159,770 

485,546 

3.04 

51,996 

0.33 

1905 

Central  Federa- 


tions  .  680,427 

9,454,075 

13.89 

7,745,901 

11.38 

Christian  Trade 

Unions  _  159,770 

. 

485,546 

3.04 

51.996 

0.33 

1910 

Central  Federa¬ 
tions  . 1,344,803 

664,376 

27,812,257 

20.68 

19,635,850 

14.60 

Christian  Trade 

Unions  _  265,032 

105,262 

2,674,190 

10.09 

1,523,214 

5.75 

1911 

Central  Federa¬ 
tions  . 2,017,298 

672,495 

64,372,190 

31.91 

52,575,505 

26.06 

Christian  Trade 

Unions  ....  295,129 

30,097 

5,490,994 

18.61 

6,113,710 

20.72 

1911 

Central  Federa¬ 
tions  . 2,320,986 

303,688 

72,086,957 

31.06 

62,105,821 

26.76 

Christian  Trade 

Unions  _  340,957 

45,828 

6,243,642 

18.31 

7,082,942 

20.7T 

Financial  Assistance  of  the  Strikers  by  the  Central 
Federations  and  the  Christian  Trade  Unions  During 
the  Years  1905,  1910,  1911. 


Legal  Protection  For  lockouts, 
and  Financial  As-  strikes,  and  vic- 
sistance  timised  workers 


O  m 
.  t- 
*-i  0) 

S  <u 

Total 

M. 

rC5 

aj 

©  . 

© 

Total 

M. 

'd 

ej 

© 

t* 

© 

Pk 

to 

1905 

Central  Federations. ...  1,544,803 

3,761,622 

2.79 

10,160,859 

7.55 

Christian  Trade  Unions  188,106 

173,168 

0.92 

1,000,320 

5.32 

1910 

Central  Federations. .  .2,017,298 

18,704,323 

9.27 

20,413,343 

10.12 

Christian  Trade  Unions  295,129 

1,154,275 

3.91 

1,239,500 

4.20 

1911 

Central  Federations. .  .2,320,986 

20,478,495 

8.82 

18,198,847 

7.84 

Christian  Trade  Unions  340,957 

1,243,347 

3.65 

1,199,598 

3.62 

“Central  Federations  are  those  trade 

union  bodies 

which 

are  organized  in  the  General  Commission  of  Trade  Unions, 
and  at  the  same  time  affiliated  to  the  International  Secretariat. 
They  call  themselves  the  “free”  and  “politically  neutral”  unions; 
whilst  in  the  capitalist  press  they  are  usually  referred  to  as 
“Socialist”  unions. 

(h)  IS  THIS  A  THREAT  TO  ORGANIZE  CATHOLIC 

UNIONS? 

(Statement  by  Rev.  Peter  E.  Dietz  of  Milwaukee,  at  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Federation  of  Labor  Convention,  Seattle,  Wash., 
November  13,  1913.) 

“The  Catholic  Church  is  opposed  to  Socialism  absolutely 
and  will  have  no  Socialistic  philosophy  whatever.  If  the  fed¬ 
eration  cares  for  the  approval  and  support  of  the  Catholic 
Church — and  it  does — it  will  continue  to  commend  itself  to 
Christian  philosophy. 

“In  this  country  there  are  no  Catholic  and  no  Christian  trade 
unions.  The  American  union  movement  of  the  past  was  a 
neutral  one,  as  best  befitting  the  nature  of  this  country's  de¬ 
velopment.  So  long  as  it  remained  neutral  it  gave  satisfaction. 
But  in  proportion  as  it  yields  to  Socialism  it  will  give  less  satis¬ 
faction  to  Christian  people.” 

(i)  THE  PRIVATE  ARMIES  OF  CAPITAL. 

(From  “Violence  and  the  Labor  Movement,”  and  “The  Gun¬ 
men” — Pearson's  Magazine,  March,  1914 — Robert  Hunter.) 
The  most  astounding  revelations  as  to  the  methods  of  the 
capitalist  classes  of  this  country  have  recently  been  made  pub¬ 
lic.  The  published  material  appeared  first  in  an  article  by  Rob¬ 
ert  Hunter  in  the  March,  1914,  issue  of  Pearson’s  Magazine  on 
“The  Gunmen  of  Industry.”  More  recently  Mr.  Hunter  hie 
written  his  book  entitled  “Violence  and  the  Labor  Movement.” 
(The  Macmillan  Company.) 

According  to  the  evidence  here  published,  gathered  from 
many  sources  and  based  upon  unchallenged  authorities,  the  fol¬ 
lowing  astounding  facts  are  established: 

1.  It  is  probable  that  there  are  in  the  employ  of  the  various 
agencies  now  supplying  private  armed  forces  to.  the  corpora¬ 
tions  and  industries,  more  men  than  are  enlisted  in  the  regular 
army  of  the  United  States. 


2.  These  private  armies  of  capitalism  are  recruited  very 
largely  from  the  vicious  and  criminal  elements  of  the  country, 
often  from  the  very  jails  and  penitentiaries  themselves.  (See 


193 


testimony  of  representatives  of  detective  agencies,  members  of 
United  States  Secret  Service,  quoted  by  Hunter). 

3.  These  private  armies  of  the  capitalist  -classes  are  ready  to 
commit  and  actually  do  commit  any  crime,  from  theft  to  whole¬ 
sale  murder,  in  the  service  of  their  masters. 

In  support  of  these  statements  we  present  the  following 
excerpts  from  the  articles  by  Mr.  Hunter  above  referred  to: 

“It  is  probable  that  it  has  constantly  in  its  employ  more  men 
than  are  enlisted  in  the  regular  army  of  the  United  States.  To 
support  such  an  army  means  the  levying  of  a  heavy  tribute  on 
American  industry.  Perhaps  a  few  figures  will  convey  some 
Idea  of  the  extent  and  of  the  profits  of  this  commerce.  An 
agent  operating  in  West  Virginia  and  Colorado  testified  that 
he  has  employed  as  many  as  5,000  men.  Another  agent  has 
testified  that  he  supplied  in  one  strike  as  many  as  1,000  men. 
Still  another  witness  says  that,  in  one  of  our  great  strikes,  there 
were  over  2,000  armed  detectives  employed,  while  several  huni- 
dred  more  were  scattered  for  secret  service  amdng  the  strikers. 
Mr.  Leroy  Scott,  a  few  years  ago,  undertook  to  describe  in 
‘World’s  Work’  the  activities  of  one  of  the  great  strike-break¬ 
ing  agencies.  He  declared  that  that  particular  agency  had 
35,000  men  enrolled  and  that  the  head  of  the  agency  was  in 
communication  with  7,000  or  8,000  others.  In  one  brief  strike 
he  supplied  5,000  men,  and  his  income  for  handling  that  strike 
was  equal  to  the  annual  salary  of  the  President  of  the  United 
States.  This  gives  some  idea  of  the  immense  profits  that  come 
to  the  manipulators  of  this  commerce.  In  reality,  they  make 
enormous  sums,  which  is  clear  from  the  fact  that  they  pay 
their  men  from  $2  to  $3  a  day,  while  they  receive  from  the 
employer  on  an  average  $5  a  day.  Of  course  the  profits  of 
these  agencies  depend  upon  the  number  of  men  employed,  and 
consequently  the  chief  interest  of  these  agencies  is  to  gtft  more 
and  more  of  their  men  employed.  An  agency  that  can  supply 
1,000  men  and  make  out  of  them  $2,000  a  day  is  conducting  an 
enormously  profitable  concern.” 

As  to  the  criminal  character  and  general  nature  of  these 
“private  armies  of  capitalism,”  Mr.  Hunter  has  this  to  say: 

“Fortunately  we  have  some  very  direct  evidence  concern¬ 
ing  the  character  of  these  detectives.  Thomas  Beet,  who  for 
some  time  represented  an.  English  detective  agency  in  this 
country,  was  so  astounded  when  he  learned  of  the  criminal 
work  undertaken  by  our  detectives  that  he  felt  it  his  duty  to 
expose  the  entire  traffic.  This  he  did  in  a  remarkable  article 
written  for  Appleton’s  Magazine,  October,  1906.  He  there 
declared  that  ‘there  are  detectives  at  the  head  of  prominent 
agencies  in  this  country  whose  pictures  adorn  the  rogues’  gal¬ 
lery;  men  who  have  served  time  in  various  prisons  for  almost 
every  crime  on  the  calendar.  *  *  *  Fully  ninety  per  cent 

of  the  private  detective  establishments,  masquerading  in  what¬ 
ever  form,  are  rotten  to  the  core.’  William  J.  Burns  -says  of  the 
men  of  his  profession  that,  ‘as  a  class,  they  are  the  biggest  lot 
of  blackmailing  thieves  that  ever  went  unwhipped  of  justice.’ 

“A  reputable  detective,  formerly  in  the  United  States  Secret 
Service,  testified  several  years  ago  that,  as  a  class,  the  detectives 
were  ‘the  scum  of  the  earth.’  *  *  *  ‘There  is  not  one  out 

of  ten  that  would  not  commit  murder;  that  you  could  not  hir« 
to  commit  murder  or  any  other  crime.’ 

“A  detective  named  Le  Vin  declared  before  the  industrial 
Commission  of  the  United  States  that  there  were  detective 
igencies  where  men  could  employ  thugs  to  beat  up  anybody.  A 
:ew  years  ago  the  late  Magistrate  Henry  Steinert  grew  very 
ndignant  in  court  over  the  shooting  of  a  young  lad  by  these 
special  officers. 

“  ‘I  think  it  an  outrage,’  he  declared,  ‘that  the  Police  Com- 


officers,  many  of  them  thugs,  men  out  of  work,  some  of  whom 
would  commit  murder  for  two  dollars/ 

♦  *  * 

“You  have  only  to  call  on  the  telephone  any  one  of  hundreds 
of  ‘detective’  agencies  to  obtain  an  assassin  of  the  very  choicest 
brand.  You  should  not,  of  course,  ask  for  a  thief  or  a  pickpocket 
or  a  murderer.  You  should  ask  for  an  operator  or  a  special 
officer  or  a  private  detective.  But,  no  matter  what  you  ask  for, 
you  will  get  a  man  carefully  selected  for  his  skill  in  criminal 
work.  You  will  obtain  a  man  who  can  shoot  straight  and  an 
agent  who  needs  no  troublesome  explanations  or  detailed  in¬ 
structions.  He  will  be  an  understanding  person,  who  will  com¬ 
prehend  very  easily  and  quickly  the  nature  of  the  work  to  be 
done.  Trained  in  the  ways  of  the  underworld,  the  ‘detective’  will 
undertake  to  see  that  the  patron  is  successful  in  whatever 
mischief  he  wants  done.  He  will  steal  the  correspondence  of 
a  business  rival— bribe  his  clerks,  burn  his  factories,  or  incite  a 
strike  among  his  employes.  He  will  dynamite  his  w’orks,  slug 
him  or  any  one  else,  and,  in  case  court  work  is  necessary,  he 
will  obtain  enough  perjured  evidence  to  accomplish  almost 
any  purpose  whatsoever.  There  is,  in  fact,  hardly  any  conceiv¬ 
able  crime  that  the  mercenaries  supplied  by  the  American  Mafia 
are  not  capable  of  committing.  And,  most  important  of  all,  no 
matter  what  the  agents  do,  it  is  understood  that  they  will  be 
fully  cared  for  by  the  Mafia  and  protected  all  along  the  line 
by  its  able  attorneys.  This  American  Mafia  has  its  agents  in 
every  city  and  town  in  the  country.” 

Among  the  crooked  detective’s  various  activities,  Mr.  Hun¬ 
ter  classifies  strike-breaking  as  the  most  profitable  ,and  he  tells 
us  that  “whenever  there  is  prospect  of  a  strike  being  settled 
peaceably,  the  gunmen  get  busy,”  manufacture  trouble,  blame 
the  strikers,  and  so  prolong  their  own  employment.  They 
themselves,  we  read,  “burn  buildings,  wreck  railroads,  or  dyna¬ 
mite  property,”  thus  insuring  continuance  of  their  jobs  and  the 
probability  that  additional  “strike-breakers”  will  be  engaged. 

*  *  * 

“Altogether  the  most  profitable  activity  of  the  American 
Mafia  is  the  work  of  strike-breaking.  At  such  times  the  Mafia 
supplies  armies  of  men  to  the  manufacturers.  In  the  railway 
strikes  about  1890,  in  Homestead  in  1892,  and  elsewhere,  hun¬ 
dreds  of  men  armed  with  Winchester  rifles  were  employed, 
while  in  Chicago  in  1894,  3,600  vagabonds  were  hurriedly  gath¬ 
ered  together,  armed  and  enlisted  as  United  States  marshals. 
Drunken,  insulting  and  brutal,  these  official  representatives  of 
the  Federal  Government  *vere  referred  to  by  Superintendent  of 
Police  Brennan  of  Chicago,  as  ‘thugs,  thieves  and  ex-convicts/ 
some  of  whom  ‘are  now  over  in  the  county  jail.  * 
arrested  while  deputy  marshals  for  highway  robbery.’  In  Colo¬ 
rado,  during  the  strike  of  the  miners  a  few  years  ago,  hundreds 
of  detectives  were  at  work,  and  some  of  them  were  exposed  as 
instigating  murder,  train-wrecking,  and  arson. 

“In  Milwaukee,  during  the  great  molders’  strike  of  a  few 
years  ago,  over  40  so-called  detectives  were  arrested  for  beat¬ 
ing  up  union  men.  It  was  proved  in  court  that  the  head  oi* 
the  detective  agency  went  personally  to  Chicago  to  employ  two 
men  at  twenty  dollars  per  day  to  come  back  with  him  to  Mil¬ 
waukee  to  commit  a  murder.  The  murder  was  committed  on 
the  person  of  Peter  J.  Cramer,  the  leader  of  the  strike.  A  few 
years  ago,  at  Latimer,  Pennsylvania,  a  peaceable  parade  ottoi 
miners  was  attacked  by  guards  armed  with  Winchester  rifles’ 
with  the  result  that  29  miners  were  murdered  and  30  others 
were  seriously  injured.  Recently,  in  the  Westmoreland  mining 
district,  no  less  than  20  striking  miners  were  murdered,  while 


195 


several  hundred  were  seriously  injured.  Not  long  ago  deputies 
and  strikebreakers  became  intoxicated  and  shot  up  the  town 
of  Latrobe,  Pennsylvania,  and  in  the  recent  strike  against  the 
Lake  Carriers’  Association,  six  union  men  were  killed  by  private 
detectives.  These  outrages  are  coming  to  be  more  and  more 
the  common  incidents  of  every  great  strike.  Our  industrial 
conflicts  provoke  a  (State  of  complete  anarchy,  and,  at  such 
times,  our  newspapers  are  filled  with  stories  of  the  terrible  out¬ 
rages  that  occur.  In  most  cases  the  strikers  are  held  responsible 
by  the  capitalist  press,  despite  the  fact  that  unbiased  observers 
have  pointed  out,  in  almost  every  case,  that  the  outrages  are 
the  deliberate  work  of  the  criminal  hirelings  of  this  commerce 
in  crime. 

“One  of  the  most  tragic  stories  of  the  work  of  these  gunmen 
was  told  to  the  committee  of  the  United  States  Senate  appointed 
to  investigate  the  conditions  in  West  Virginia.  On  the  night 
of  February  7,  1913,  one  of  the  owners  of  some  coal  mines  in 
West  Virginia  gathered  together  a  band  of  gunmen  for  the 
express  purpose  of  shooting  up  a  village  of  strikers.  They  had 
been  evicted  from  their  cabins,  and,  when  the  United  Mine 
Workers  had  supplied  them  with  tents  and  bedding,  they  set  up 
a  camp.  The  mine  owners,  of  course,  wanted  to  drive  them 
out  of  the  district,  and  when  the  news  reached  the  detectives 
that  a  man  had  been  shot  in  the  village,  a  coal  operator  ordered 
an  armored  train  to  be  got  ready.  It  was  called  the  Bull  Moose, 
and  heavy  sheets  of  steel  lined  its  sides  for  the  protection  of 
the  detectives.  A  machine  gun  capable  of  120  shots  a  minute 
was  mounted  on  the  train  and  about  twenty  gunmen  armed 
with  high-powered  Winchester  rifles  made  up  the  crew.  The 
train  was  taken  up-  the  valley  at  night,  and  as  it  neared  the 
village  the  lights  were  turned  out.  As  the  train  was  passing 
the  first  tent  the  firing  began,  and  as  it  moved  slowly  through 
the  village  a  continuous  fusillade  was  poured  upon  the  men, 
women  and  children  in  the  tents.  This  is  the  story  in  brief  as 
it  was  told  to  the  Senate  Committee.  One  of  the  gunmen  testi¬ 
fied  that  Quinn  Morton  (a  mine  owner)  wanted  to  have  the 
train  go  back  through  the  village  and  “give  them  another  round.” 
Whereupon  Senator  Martine  exclaimed: 

“  ‘This  man,  who,  in  the  name  of  heaven,  can  he  be,  that 
would  propose  to  go  back  and  kill  more?  Is  he  an  ordinary 
citizen?’ 

“Mr.  Jackson:  ‘He  will  be  before  you,  Senator.’ 

“Senator  Martine:  ‘Well.  God  help  us  all,  then’.” 

*  *  * 

“As  soon  as  the  strike  occurred  in  the  Calumet  district  the 
^alumet  and  Hecla  Mining  Company  began  importing  gunmen. 
Most  of  them  came  from  the  Archer  and  the  Waddell-Mahon 
ietective  agencies  in  New  York.  The  Waddell-Mahon  Agency 
las  what  amounts  to  a  standing  army  of  men  to  be  used  as 
guards  at  strikes.  James  A.  Waddell,  who  directed  his  men  at 
_alumet,  explained  that  most  of  them  were  former  New  York 
jolicemen,  but  he  did  not  explain  how  they  happened  to  leave 
he  force.  With  the  assistance  of  the  state  troops  they  kept 
he  strikers  indoors  after  seven  in  the  evening,  and  did  not  per- 
nit  them  to  come  out  again  till  nine  in  the  morning.  And  now 
he  Federal  Government  is  investigating  the  deportation  of 
Charles  H.  Moyer  from  Calumet.  Well,  the  government  has 
nvestigated  before,  but  it  has  always  stopped  there.  Let  us 
iope  that  it  will  go  farther  this  time.  If  the  investigation  is 
incere  the  Government  will  learn  that  these  “detectives”  create 
nore  violence  than  they  suppress.  Mr.  Moyer,  by  the  way,  was 
hot  in  the  back.  No  apparent  effort  has  been  made  to  appre- 
end  the  man  who  shot  him,  but  Moyer  has  been  indicted.  So 
ustice  moves  in  Michigan.” 


Speaking  of  the  private  armed  forces  of  capitalism,  the  situa¬ 
tion  in  Pennsylvania  is  unique.  The  state  laws  with  regard  to 
the  state  police  and  the  various  types  of  “peace  officers”  show 
a  tendency  both  dajj^erous  and  alarming.  There  are  in  each 
community  in  Pennlyfcvania,  besides  the  local  police  force,  4 
classes  of  peace  officers: 

(1)  The  state  coal  and  iron  police. 

(2)  Deputy  sheriffs. 

(3)  Deputy  constables. 

(4)  The  state  police. 

The  state  coal  and  iron  police  are  nothing  but  the  hired 
military  force  of  the  corporations.  The  act  providing  for  the 
establishment  of  this  coal  and  iron  police  reads  as  follows: 

“That  the  provisions  of  the  act  of  the  27th  of  February,  in 
the  year  of  our  Lord,  one  thousand,  eight  hundred  and  sixty- 
five,  entitled  'an  act  empowering  railroad  companies  to  employ 
police  force,’  be  and  the  same  are  hereby  extended  to  embrace 
all  corporations,  firms,  or  individuals  owning,  leasing,  or  being 
in  possession  of  any  colliery,  furnace  or  rolling  mill  within  this 
Commonwealth,  and  that  upon  the  application  of  any  such  cor¬ 
poration,  firm  or  individual,  the  governor  may  appoint  and 
commission  policemen,  under  the  provisions  of  the  act  to  which 
this  is  a  supplement:  Provided,  That  the  words  ‘coal  aad  iron 
police’  shall  be  engraved  upon  the  shields  to  be  worn  by  the 
policemen  appointed  under  this  act  instead  of  the  words  ‘rail¬ 
way  police,’  as  provided  by  the  act  to  which  this  is  a  supple¬ 
ment:  And  provided  further,  That  the  governor  shall  have 
power  to  decline  to  make  any  such  appointment  sought  to  be 
made  under  the  provisions  of  this  supplement  whenever  the  cir¬ 
cumstances  of  the  case,  in  his  opinion,  do  not  require  it,  and 
at  any  time  to  revoke  the  commission  of  any  policeman  ap¬ 
pointed  hereunder.” 

From  this  it  will  be  seen  that  any  big  corporation  is  author¬ 
ized,  under  the  law  of  the  state  of  Pennsylvania,  to  make  appli¬ 
cation  to  the  governor,  who,  upon  such  application,  may  ap¬ 
point  such  police.  These  police  are  paid  by  the  companies. 
(See  Report  on  the  Miners’  Strike  in  Bituminous  Coal  Field 
in  Westmoreland  County,  Pa.,  H.  R.  document  No.  847,  62d 
congress,  2d  session,  p.  93.) 

Deputy  constables  are  appointed  upon  application  of  not  less 
than  25  taxpayers  of  any  county  in  the  state  of  Pennsylvania 
to  the  court  of  quarter  sessions  of  said  county.  The  act  rela¬ 
tive  to  the  appointment  of  deputy  constables  was  approved  on 
May  9,  1889,  and  reads  as  follows.: 

“Upon  the  petition  of  not  less  than  twenty-five  taxpayers 
of  the  township  of  any  county  of  this  Commonwealth  to  the 
'  court  of  quarter  sessions  of  said  county,  representing  that  the 
safety  of  the  citizens  and  the  security  of  property  makes,  in 
their  opinion,  necessary  the  appointment  of  one  or  two  deputy 
constables,  to  act  as  policemen,  it  shall  be  the  duty  of  the 
court  to  consider  said  petition  and,  if  satisfied  of  the  reasonable¬ 
ness  and  propriety  of  said  application,  to  make  such  appointment 
for  such  time  and  number  as  to  the  court  may  seem  proper;  and 
such  deputy  constables  iso  appointed  shall  severally  possess  and 
exercise  all  the  powers  of  policemen  of  cities  of  this  Common¬ 
wealth  in  the  several  townships  in  which  they  shall  be  so 
appointed  as  aforesaid,  and  the  keepers  of  jails,  lockups,  or 
station  houses  are  required  to  receive  all  persons  arrested  by 
such  policemen  for  the  commission  of  any  offense  aganist  the 
lawa  of  this  Commonwealth  within  the  township  for  which  they 
shall  be  appointed  as  aforesaid.” 

Under  the  provisions  of  this  act  it  is  possible  for  the  com¬ 
panies  to  secure  the  appointment  of  additional  policemen  and. 


197 


as  a  matter  of  fact,  these  also  are  in  time  of  strike  generally 
paid  by  the  company  and  therefore  are  really  in  their  service. 
(See  report  mentioned  above,  p.  94.) 

As  to  the  state  police,  this  is  a  standing  force,  semi-military 
in  character,  which  is  regularly  supported  by  the  state.  We 
quote  from  the  report  on  the  miners’  strike,  above  referred  to, 
which  says  that  this  standing  body  was  created  by  an  act  of 

“The  state  police  is  a  standing  body  and  was  created  by  an 
act  of  1905.  It  is  frequently,  but  inaccurately,  called  the  ‘state 
constabulary.’  It  is  composed  of  four  companies  or  troops, 
each  of  which,  when  full,  consists  of  7  officers  and  50  men.  They 
are  appointed  by  the  superintendent  of  the  state  police  and  are 
a  carefully  /selected  and  well-trained  body.  They  wear  uniforms, 
are  equipped  with  pistols,  rifles  and  maces,  and  are  mounted. 
They  live  in  permanent  barracks,  and  the  barracks  of  one  of  the 
companies,,  called  Troop  A,  are  located  a  mile  and  a  half  from 
Greensburg.  The  state  police  were  the  only  peace  officers  who 
served  on  strike  duty  that  were  a  disciplined  force  or  whose 
services  were  not  paid  for  by  the  coal  companies.” 

Speaking  of  the  strike  in  Westmoreland  County,  the  com¬ 
missioners  of  labor  said  that  the  state  coal  and  iron  police,  the 
deputy  sheriffs  and  the  deputy  constables  were  all  paid  by  the 
company.  The  state  police  was  paid  by  the  state. 

Of  these  four  types  .of  police  force  of  the  state  of  Pennsyl¬ 
vania,  the  /state  police,  popularly  known  as  the  constabulary, 
seems  to  be  the  most  objectionable  and  dangerous.  James  H. 
Maurer,  socialist  representative  from  Burks  County,  introduced 
a  measure  in  the  state  legislature  on  March  16,  1911,  asking 
for  the  abolition  of  the  department  of  state  police.  In  so  doing 
he  presented  the  following  in  support  of  his  proposition: 

“The  institution  to  start  with  is  un-American.  It  is  in  direct 
conflict  with  our  American  ideas  of  liberty,  and  I  shall  prove 
that  it  does  not  maintain  law  and  order,  but  provokes  disorder; 
that  it  does  not  protect  life  and  property,  but  takes  life  and 
causes  property  to  be  destroyed;  that  the  real  object  of  this 
institution  (the  Department  of  State  Police)  is  not  to  protect 
life  and  property,  but  is  organized  solely  for  the  purpose  of 
intimidating  the  workmen  of  Pennsylvania  at  such  times  as  the 
masters  of  our  industries  make  living  conditions  unbearable; 
that  the  department  was  created  for  the  sole  purpose  of  aiding 
great  combinations  of  capitalists  when  in  conflict  with  their 
employes,  the  following  record  made  by  this  department  during 
the  past  five  years  will  prove.  I  shall  cite  very  briefly  a  few 
concrete  cases: 

“In  the  early  part  of  1910  the  employes  at  the  Bethlehem 
Steel  Works  were  on  strike.  I  was  there  during  the  early  part 
of  the  strike.  Everything  was  orderly,  scarcely  a  drunken  street 
brawl.  The  local  police  records  will  show  that  very  few  arrests 
were  made,  and  that  exceptional  good  order  prevailed.  But  the 
men  were  not  working,  and  this  meant  a  loss  of  thousands  to 
the  company,  or  more  properly  speaking,  the  Steel  Trust. 

“The  workers  appealed  to  both  our  Governor  and  the  Presi¬ 
dent  of  the  United  States  for  an  investigation,  but  neither  found 
the  time,  or,  as  one  said,  a  law  giving  him  such  power.  But 
when  Mr.  Schwab  or  his  agents  asked  for  State  aid,  it  was 
promptly  granted.  The  constabulary  went  to  South  Bethlehem 
and  was  used  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  break  the  strike. 
Remember,  the  local  police  records  show  that  order  prevailed 
until  these  uniformed  strike-breakers  arrived.  Almost  imme¬ 
diately  upon  their  arrival  a  regime  of  terror  was  inaugurated; 
men,  women  and  children  were  beaten,  ridden  down,  and  mur¬ 
der  committed.  Wholesale  arrests  were  made  on  trumped  up 
charges;  those  arrested  were  held  as  prisoners  on  steel  com- 


198 


pany  property,  denied  the  right  of  counsel  and  finally  tried 
under  the  direct  supervision  of  Schwab’s  agents.  Gentlemen* 
what  could  have  been  the  purpose  of  this  viciousness  and  bru¬ 
tality,  that  beggars  description?  The  answer  is  easy:  To 
stampede  the  men  back  to  work,  to  break  a  peaceable  and  or¬ 
derly  strike.  And  this  is  what  your  uniformed,  legalized  State 
strike-breakers  have  done — broken  the  strike.” 

In  further  support  of  his  proposition  for  the  abolition  of 
the  state  police,  Maurer  referred  to  the  Report  on  Strike  at 
Bethlehem  Steel  Works,  South  Bethlehem,  Penn.,  by  the  com¬ 
missioner  of  labor.  (Senate  Document  No.  521,  61st  Congress, 
2d  session.)  This  report  states  definitely  that  no  serious  trou¬ 
ble  had  occurred  in  the  strike  district  up  to  the  time  of  the 
appearance  of  the  state  police,  and  that  as  soon  as  the  state 
police  appeared  trouble  began.  The  report  says: 

“Nothing  had  occurred  between  the  4th  of  February,  the 
date  of  the  beginning  of  the  strike  of  machinists,  and  the  24th 
of  February,  worthy  of  special  notice  *  *  *  and  according  ! 

to  the  statement  of  the  chief  of  police,  ‘there  were  no  reports  j 
of  any  violence  up  to  the  night  of  February  25.’ 

“On  February  25,  at  the  request  of  the  sheriff,  the  governor  I 
ordered  some  of  the  state  police  to  South  Bethlehem,  where  they  : 
arrived  on  the  morning  of  the  26th.  During  the  day  there  were  p 
several  clashes  between  the  state  police  and  crowds  collected  j 
on  the  streets.  During  one  of  these  clashes  a  number  of  people 
were  injured,  and  one  man  who  was  in'  the  barroom  of  a  hotel 
was  killed  by  a  shot  fired  by  one  of  the  state  police.”  (p.  20.) 

As  to  what  followed  the  arrival  of  the  constabulary,  we  quote 
from  the  statement  of  the  chief  of  police  of  South  Bethlehem, 
Mr.  Hugh  Kelley,  from  the  senate  document  above  referred  to. 
He  says: 

“When  the  constabulary  arrived  here,  February  26,  1910, 
neither  the  burgess  or  myself,  as  chief  of  police,  were  informed 
of  their  arrival.  They  were  in  charge  of  the  sheriff.  About 
two  blocks  from  where  they  got  off  the  cars,  at  Third  and  New 
streets,  one  of  the  troopers  jumped  off  his  horse,  caught  a  man 
by  the  throat,  pulled  his  collar  and  tie  off,  without  any  reason. 
On  their  way  down  to  the  steel  company’s  office  they  assaulted 
a  number  of  other  people  standing  on  the  corners  of  the  streets. 
In  one  instance  one  of  the  local  police  officers  who  witnessed 
this  assault,  protested  against  it,  but  he  had  no  weight  whatever. 
They  beat  people  standing  peaceably  on  the  street;  men  were 
arrested  and  taken  to  the  plant  of  the  steel  company  and  there 
confined. 

“They  started  out  on  our  streets,  beat  down  our  people  with¬ 
out  any  reason  whatever,  and  they  shot  down  an  innocent  man, 
Joseph  Zambo,  who  was  not  on  the  street,  but  was  in  the 
Majestic  Hotel.  One  of  the  troopers  rode  up  on  the  pavement 
at  the  hotel  door  and  fired  two  shots  into  the  barroom,  shooting 
one,  man  in  the  mouth  and  another  (Szambo)  through  the 
head,  who  died  that  afternoon. 

“There  was  no  disturbance  of  any  kind  at  this  hotel,  the 
Majestic  was  the  headquarters  of  the  leaders  who  were  con¬ 
ducting  the  strike. 

“The  troopers  were  sent  out  through  the  town,  and  what¬ 
ever  riot  or  trouble  have  occurred  in  our  town  since  their 
arrival  is  due  entirely  to  their  high-handed  and  cowardly  attacks 
upon  innocent  people. 

“Troopers  went  into  the  houses  of  people  without  warrant 
and  searched  the  inmates,  drove  people  from  their  own  door¬ 
steps.  They  beat  an  old  man  at  least  sixty  years  of  age.  Struck 
him  with  a  riot  stick,  knocked  him  down,  and  left  him  in  a  very 
bad  condition.  This  is  only  one  of  a  dozen  similar  cases. 

“During  the  Philadelphia  carmen’s  strike,  the  troopers,  as 


199 

usual,  were  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Rapid  Transit  Com- 
pany,  and  used  for  the  same  purposes  as  they  were  at  Bethle- 

.‘T0  giTe  an  a«ount  of  individual  acts,  or  give  an  account  of 

.me  WA  dti^eCtJr  y  °r  generua"y  wouId  take  considerable 
I  ™.  ,A  .CItlzen>  who  is  a  merchant  on  Germantown  avenue 
and  who  u  also  a  nat.ve  of  Russia,  says:  ‘I  can  hardly  make 
myself  believe  that  it  really  happened,  yet  I  saw  men  beaten 
women  and  children  chased  about  the  streets  like  cattle  and 
I  wasinot  permitted  to  stand  on  my  own  door  step.  I  thought 
the  Cossacks  in  Russia  were  murderers,  but  your  State  Con- 

» Cossacks.’  ,S  °ne  hUndred  Per  C6nt  W°rse  ‘he  Russfan 

.  That  the  Constabulary  was  created  in  the  interest  of  indns 
trial  masters,  and  is  used  for  this  purpose,  is  proven  even  by' 
Superintendent  John  C.  Groome’s  own  report  to  ex-Governor 
Stuart,  on  December  31,  1909.  On  pages  eight  and  nine  w°ll 

of  them  foHowT- ^  °f  made  duHng  the  A  few 

Assault  and  battery . 

Disorderly  conduct .  ’"dsn 

Drunk  and  disorderly  . Ins 

Larceny  .  . 

Rioting  . . . . 

Vagrancy  .  .-c 

Trespassing  . !!*.!!!!!”** 9* 

Unlawful  possession  of  lire  arms.  .  81 

Violation  of  election  laws.' .  f 

Violation  of  forestry  laws .  .  ? 

Violation  of  game  laws.  on 

Violation  of  health  laws _ .  7 

Violation  of  school  laws  i 

Violation  of  automobile  laws.’!!.'.’.’.".’  { 

All  told,  during  the  year,  3,799  arrests  were  made;  746  were 
discharged  (for  want  of  evidence,  no  doubt);  440  still  awaiting 

Notice  the  large  number  of  arrests  for  drunk  and  disor¬ 
derly  conduct,  assault  and  battery,  disorderly  conduct,  vagrancy 
trespassing,  noting  and  unlawful  possession  of  fire  arms.  These 
are  the  charges  usually  lodged  against  those  whom  they  are 
pleased  to  call  the  mob,’  when  a  strike  is  on. 

“Now  just  look  over  the  column  and  see  how  many  were 
arrested  for>  real  serious  crimes— violating  health  laws;  seven 
all  told;  isn  t  this  a  gallant  record  in  a  state  which  is  honey- 
combed  with  unsanitary  factories,  mills,  workshops,  tenements, 
etc..  Three  arrests  were  made  for  robbery,  and  two  of  these 
proved  their  innocence  and  were  discharged.  Surely  our  prop¬ 
erty  is  safe  with  these  state  watch  dogs  on  the  job.  And  for 
violating  the  automobile  laws,  which  all  of  us  know  are  con¬ 
stantly  being  violated  in  every  corner  of  the  state.  Superintend¬ 
ent  Groome  informs  us  that  his  army  of  220  men,  during  the 
entire  year,  have  made  ONE  arrest  for  these  thousands  of 
automobile  violations. 

That  they  are  of  any  real  service  to  the  farmer  I  deny.  The 
only  time  they  patrol  the  rural  districts  is  when  the  big  capi¬ 
talists  do  not  need  them  to  crush  their  overworked  and  under¬ 
fed  employes.  To  say  that  this  legally  organized  band  of 
strike-breakers  is  of  service  to  the  farmer  is  to  insult  our 
intelligence.  Pennsylvania  covers  an  area  of  over  45,000  square 
miles.  No  police  officer  can  properly  patrol  more  than  three 
square  miles;  therefore,  to  give  the  farmer  that  which  they  try 
.o  make  him  Relieve  he  has  (police  protection)  would  require  a 
force  of  15,000  men.  The  payroll  alone  for  this  army  would 
run  over  $14,000,000  a  year,  not  to  say  a  word  for  equipment 
horses,  barracks,  etc. 

“The  sole  purpose  of  the  State  police  is  to  serve  that  class 


200 


at  whose  solicitation  they  were  created.  No  farmer  asked  that 
this  department  be  created.  Had  the  farmer  asked  for  it,  and 
were  they  only  to  be  used  for  his  protection,  and  not  for  strike 
duty,  you  know  the  farmers  would  have  received  no  more  con¬ 
sideration  on  this  question  than  they  have  on  other  questions.” 
(“The  Constabulary  of  Pennsylvania,”  by  C.  A.  Maurer.) 

12.  Three  Great  Labor  Struggles  of  1912-14. 

(a)  WEST  VIRGINIA  COAL  MINERS’  STRIKE. 

West  Virginia  Under  a  Democratic  President,  a  Progressive 
and  a  Republican  Governor. 

When  in  1894  the  great  American  Railway  Union  Strike 
broke  out  and  the  strikers  were  on  the  verge  of  victory,  a 
Democratic  President,  Grover  Cleveland,  sent  the  federal  army 
into  Illinois  to  intimidate  the  strikers.  His  excuse  was  that  the 
mails  were  being  interfered  with. 

In  West  Virginia  the  constitutional  rights  of  citizens  were 
completely  abrogated,  first,  by  a  Progressive,  then  by  a  Repub¬ 
lican  governor.  Why  did  Wilson  not  interfere?  The  following 
is  taken  from  an  article  by  Allan  L.  Benson  in  the  Metropolitan 
Magazine  for  June,  1913,  and  shows  the  horrible  conditions 
which  existed  in  West  Virginia: 

During  the  last  eleven  months  of  the  Taft  administration 
this  great  government,  which  can  hear  from  so  far  when  it  wants 
to,  gave  no  sign  that  it  had  received  one  word  from  West  Vir¬ 
ginia.  And  during  the  first  two  months  of  the  Wilson  adminis¬ 
tration  nothing  that  anybody  heard  was  sufficient  to  set  the 
ether  tingling  with  the  stern  order  to  restore  constitutional 
government  in  West  Virginia.  The  Secretary  of  Labor,  Mr. 
Wilson,  knew  all  the  facts,  and  I  can  personally  vouch  for  it 
that  his  blood  boiled.  But,  unhappily,  one  gentleman  of  boiling 
blood  is  insufficient  to  make  the  blood  6f  the  government  boil. 
At  the  time  I  saw  Secretary  Wilson  it  seemed  likely  that  the 
government,  sooner  or  later,  would  come  across  with  a  resolu¬ 
tion  of  Congress  or  something  of  the  sort.  But  there  was  no 
talk  of  discharging  the  duty  imposed  by  the  constitution  to 
restore  and  maintain  a  republican  form  of  government  in  West 
Virginia.  There  was  talk  only  of  a  congressional  investigation 
that  would  probably  come,  coroner-like,  after  the  strike  had 
worn  itself  out. 

WAR  UPON  WOMEN. 

The  breaking  out  of  the  strike  was  speedily  followed  by 
extraordinary  activity  upon  the  part  of  the  Baldwin  guards. 
These  gentlemen,  armed  to  the  teeth  themselves,  invaded  the 
homes  of  strikers  to  search  for  firearms.  When  the  wives  of 
the  miners  objected,  as  they  often  did,  to  the  ransacking  of  their 
houses,  they  were  beaten  up.  They  were  not  only  beaten  up— 
they  were  cursed  and  reviled.  Hundreds  of  such  assaults  oc¬ 
curred.  Perhaps  one  of  the  most  shameful  attacks  was  that 
made  upon  Mrs.  Jenina  Seville,  who,  under  oath,  told  the  follow¬ 
ing  story  to  the  investigating  commission  appointed  by  Gov¬ 
ernor  Glasscock: 

“My  husband  and  I  were  going  down  to  the  store  when  he 
got  arrested  by  the  guards,  who  were  going  to  take  him  away. 
I  went  close  to  the  guards  to  tell  them  to  let  my  husband  alone. 
My  husband  had  never  hurt  any  one  or  done  anything.  When 
I  went  close  and  told  them,  they  beat  me  up  and  threw  me  down 

on  the  track.  ,  . 

“About  the  fifth  of  June  I  was  washing  in  the  house  early 
in  the  morning  when  the  guards  came  to  the  house,  broke  in, 
punched  me  in  the  face  and  then  went  to  turning  things  upside 
down  in  search  for  firearms.  On  the  bed  there  was  a  little 


201 


baby,  and  they  kicked  me  in  the  stomach  and  called  me  bad 
names.  When  they  kicked  me  I  fell  to  the  floor,  but  they 
picked  me  up  and  asked  me  where  were  the  keys  to  the  trunk 
I  was  pretty  near  fainted  and  I  told  them  I  did  not  know  I 
expected  to  have  another  baby  in  three  months,  but  I  never 
heard  my  baby  call  again  after  they  kicked  me  in  the  stomach 
A  little  later  it  was  born  dead.” 

This  is  not  a  rumor.  It  is  testimony.  Pages  could  be  filled 
with  such  testimony.  Read  what  Molly  Fish,  wife  of  a  miner 
at  Holley  Grove,  swore  to: 

^  “I  was  down  at  the  Junction  on  July  17  to  help  my  sister- 
in-law  on  the  train  with  her  baby.  Several  strikebreakers  got 
off.  I  said:  ‘Boys,  there  is  a  strike  on  at  Paint  Creek,  and 
you  had  better  stay  away  from  there  and  not  take  our  work 
away  from  us.’  One  of  the  guards  grabbed  me  by  the  throat 
and  hit  me  with  ihis  fist.  Somebody  said:  ‘Watch  out  that  is 
a  lady  you  are  striking!’  He  said:  ‘God  damn  the  lady;  let  her 
stay  in  her  place.’  He  struck  me  several  times.” 

As  summer  proceeded  and  it  became  apparent  that  the 
miners  did  not  intend  quickly  to  surrender,  the  mine  owners 
i  6rS  f°r  wholesale  evictions  from  the  company  houses 
Ihe  Baidwm  guards  were  brought  into  play  and  women  and 
children  were  driven  out  of  their  homes  as  if  they  had  been  so 
many  cattle.  Mercenaries  armed  with  guns  threw  the  furniture 
of  householders  into  the  roads,  where  many  of  the  dispossessed 
slept  for  several  nights  before  the  United  Mine  Workers  of 
America  could  provide  them  with  tents  in  which  to  live.  As 
a  sample  of  what  happened  to  many  a  woman,  the  case  of  Mrs 
Isaiah  Smith  may  be  cited.  .  At  the  time  Mrs.  Smith  was  put  out 
of  her  home  she  had  a  baby  three  weeks  old.  Mrs.  Smith  and 
her  young  baby  were  compelled  to  sleep  four  nights  beside 

\C0^iltry  r0ad’  and  her  affidavit  to  this  effect  is  on  file  before 
the  Glasscock  commission. 

Violence  on  the  part  of  the  mining  companies  made  the  mine 
owners  fear  violence  upon  the  part  of  the  miners.  From  the 
very  first,  the  mine  owners  feared  violence.  Early  in  the 
struggle  they  caused  their  armed  thugs  to  search  the  persons 
and  houses  of  miners  for  firearms.  Nor  would  this  fear  down. 
So  Governor  Glasscock,  the  great  Progressive  leader  who  be¬ 
came  one  of  the  “Seven  Little  Governors”  to  urge  Mr.  Roose¬ 
velt  to  stand  for  the  Republican  nomination  for  the  Presidency 
—Governor  Glasscock  was  persuaded  to  send  troops  into  the 
district  and  put  the  Kanawha  region  under  martial  law.  At 
first,  the  miners  welcomed  the  troops  as  protection  against  the 
murderous  guards.  The  troops  justified  expectations  only  to 
the  extent  of  disarming  the  guards.  To  make  the  performance 
seem  impartial,  the  troops  also  disarmed  the  miners.  But  the 
guards  found  means  of  arming  themselves  as  frequently  as  they 
were  disarmed.  Somebody  continued  to  furnish  them  with  guns. 
Perhaps  not  all  of  the  guards  were  furnished  with  more  guns 
All  of  the  guards  were  a  little  more  careful  to  keep  their  weap¬ 
ons  under  cover.  But  that  many  continued  to  be  armed  was 
shown  by  the  wanton  murders  that  occurred  during  the  fol¬ 
lowing  winter. 


The  mine  owners  welcomed  winter.  They  looked  upon  it  as 
tfieir  strongest  ally— stronger  even  than  the  state  government. 
Winters  in  the  West  Virginia  mountains  are  cold.  Many  hun¬ 
dreds  of  the  5,000  miners  who  went  on  strike  in  April  were 
lving  in  tents  on  the  hillsides  adjoining  the  companies’  proper- 
■ies.  I  he  mine-owning  expectation  was  that  the  bitter  cold  of 
vinter  would  tend  to  drive  the  miners  back  to  the  mines. 

But  sole  reliance  was  not  to  be  placed  upon  the  cold  Some- 
:hing  could  be  done  to  help  the  cold.  Strikebreakers  could  be 


202 


imported.  Cold  shivers  could  be  sent  through  the  strikers  by 
marching  in  men  to  take  their  places. 

Negotiations  were  opened  with  detective  agencies  in  New 
York,  Cleveland,  Cincinnati  and  Chicago.  One  of  the  modern 
functions  of  a  certain  type  of  detective  agency  is  to  furnish 
strikebreakers  when  required.  Never  is  this  proceeding  accom¬ 
panied  by  high  moral  emotions  on  the  part  of  the  detective 
agencies.  Always  is  there  deception  and  fraud,  and  not  infre¬ 
quently  “shanghaing”  and  slugging— “shanghaing”  being  a  sailor 
term  for  kidnaping  and  enforced  servitude.  But  in  plain  and 
fancy  lying,  together  with  a  high  quality  of  shanghaing,  the 
detective  agencies  that  furnished  strikebreakers  for  the  West 
Virginia  mining  companies  perhaps  exceeded  all  similar  achieve¬ 
ments.  Men  were  told  that  they  were  wanted  for  work  in  Cali¬ 
fornia.  Men  were  told  that  they  were  needed  to  build  cities 
in  West  Virginia.  Men  were  told  that  they  were  wanted  to 
build  railroads.  Men  were  told  almost  everything  except  the 
truth.  They  were  told  they  would  be  taken  to  and  from  their 
place  of  destination  without  expense  to  themselves.  They  were 
told  that  they  would  be  paid  wages  of  exceptional  richness  and 
fatness.  Once  snared,  they  were  imprisoned  in  rooms  near  rail¬ 
way  stations,  marched  under  guard  to  the  trains,  locked  in  the 
cars,  compelled  to  make  trips  requiring  as  many  as  thirty  hours 
without  eating,  and  at  last  dumped  off  at  the  mines  in  West 
Virginia  and  told  to  go  to  work.  Some  refused  and  were  forced 
to  go  to  work  at  the  point  of  the  pistol.  Some  worked  a  few 
days  and  demanded  their  wages,  only  to  be  told  that  they  still 
owed  the  company  the  difference  between  their  earnings  and 
their  railway  fare.  Some  were  driven  out  of  the  valleys,  and 
compelled  to  walk  to  Charleston,  while  relays  of  armed  guards 
dogged  their  heels  to  keep  them  walking.  Some  escaped  in  the 
night  and  were  fired  at  by  guards  as  they  swam  icy  waters  in 
December  and  January. 

All  of  these  statements  have  been  made — most  of  them 
under  oath.  All  of  them  are  before  me.  If  I  had  all  of  this 
magazine  instead  of  but  a  part  of  it,  I  could  give  you  all  of 
these  statements,  together  with  the  names  of  those  who  made 
them.  But  the  important  fact  up  to  which  I  am  leading  is  that 
by  lying,  shanghaing  and  flimflamming,  the  companies  succeeded 
in  bringing  in  perhaps  2,000  strikebreakers. 

However,  these  2,000  men  were  not  worth  much  to  the  mine 
owner.  They  knew  nothing  about  mining.  They  did  not  serve 
even  to  frighten  the  strikers  into  surrender.  So  an  armored 
train  was  sent  up  the  railroad  one  night  to  give  the  miners 
something  to  think  about.  With  lights  out,  it  crept  along  until 
it  came  to  Holley  Grove,  where  a  number  of  miners  and  their 
families  were  living  in  tents.  At  what  was  believed  to  be  the 
proper  spot,  fire  was  opened  from  the  train  with  machine  guns 
and  rifles.  The  miners  returned  the  fire.  The  newspapers  the 
next  morning  said  that  sixteen  miners  had  been  killed.  Nobody 
knows  to  this  day  how  many  were  killed.  Both  miners  and 
Baldwin  guards  never  said  much  about  their  casualties. 

MOTHER  JONES  ARRESTED. 

Only  six  had  gone  back  in  Cabin  Creek  and  none  in  Paint 
Creek.  Something  more  must  be  done  to  weaken  the  miners. 
The  next  best  thing  seemed  to  be  to  arrest  Mother  Jones  and  a 
number  of  other  agitators  who  had  been  traveling  up  and  down 
the  valleys  urging  the  miners  to  stand  pat.  Unfortunately. 
Mother  Jones,  at  the  moment,  was  not  in  the  strike  district  where 
martial  law  prevailed;  else  it  would  have  been  a  simple  matter 
to  detail  a  soldier  to  capture  the  80-year-old  disturber.  She 
was  in  Charleston,  twenty  miles  away.  So  a  ^omplaint  was 
sworn  out  against  Mother  Jones  charging  her  with  a  great  many 


203 

offenses.  She  was  charged  with  being  an  accessory  before  cer- 

™urders  th^  we.re  said  ^  have  been  committed  the  night 
that  the  armored  train  descended  upon  Holley  Grove;  charged 
with  inciting  to  murder;  charged  with  stealing  a  machine  gun 
from  the  Paint  Creek  Collieries  Company.  And,  while  no  war¬ 
rant  was  issued  upon  the  basis  of  the  complaint,  Mother  Jones, 
together  with  John  Brown,  a  Socialist  agitator,  Paul  Paulsen 
and  C.  H.  Boswell,  editor  of  a  Socialist  newspaper  in  Charles¬ 
ton,  were  arrested. 

.  . That  was  not  unprecedented.  Labor  leaders  had  been  taken 
into  custody  upon  trumped  up  charges  before.  It  is  one  of  the 
modern  methods  of  ending  a  strike.  What  was  unprecedented 
was  that  the  prisoners  were  taken  into  the  district  in  which 
martia1  law  prevailed  and  thrown  into  a  military  prison  to  be 
tried  by  drumhead  court-martial. 

Senator  Borah,  Member  of  Senatorial  Committee,  Admits  That 
Constitutional  Rights  of  Workingmen  Were  Violated. 

When  the  strike  in  West  Virginia  had  well  nigh  worn  itself 
out,  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  ordered  an  investigation  of 
conditions  prevailing  in  West  Virginia.  The  charges  of  the 
miners  were  substantiated  in  every  detail.  Senator  Borah  of 
Idaho,  a  member  of  the  Senatorial  Committee  that  conducted 
the  investigation,  reported  to  the  Senate  as  follows: 

After  briefly  reviewing  the  incidents  of  the  establishment  of 
•martial  law  and  its  maintenance  in  the  Cabin  Creek  and  Paint 
Creek  districts  for  nearly  a  year,  Senator  Borah’s  statement 
sets  forth: 


“That  during  the  reign  of  martial  law  a  number  of  individ¬ 
uals  were  arrested,  tried,  convicted,  sentenced,  and  punished  for 
offenses  alleged  to  have  been  committed  by  them. 

That  those  parties  were  arrested  upon  orders  issued  by  the 
military  authorities,  and  not  by  virtue  of  any  warrant  issued 
by  the  civil  authorities  or  from  the  established  courts  of  the 
state,  and  were  put  upon  their  trial  without  the  finding  of  any 
indictment  by  the  grand  jury,  before  a  court-martial  created  by 
the  order  of  the  commander  in  chief  and  composed  of  individ¬ 
uals  selected  by  him. 


ACCUSED  MOT  GIVEN  JURY  TRIAL. 

.  That  the  charges  made  against  these  parties  thus  put  upon 
their  trial  were  in  the  nature  of  specifications  drawn  up  and 
presented  by  the  military  authorities  and  upon  these  they  were 
put^  upon  their  trial  before  said  court  martial  without  a  jury. 

That  in  the  trial  of  these  parties  and  in  the  assessing  of 
punishments  the  court  before  which  they  were  tried  deemed 
itself  bound  alone  by  the  orders  of  the  commander  in  chief,  the 
governor  of  the  state,  and  in  no  respect  bound  to  observe  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  or  the  Constitution  or  the 
statutes  of  the  state  of  West  Virginia  relative  to  the  trial  and 
punishment  of  parties  charged  with  crime. 

“That  they  acted  under  the  claim  that  all  the  provisions  of 
the  constitutions,  both  state  and  national,  and  the  statutes  of 
the  state  relative  to  such  matters,  were  suspended  and  for  the 
time  inoperative  by  reason  of  the  existence  of  martial  law. 

“That  at  the  time  these  arrests  were  made  and  the  trials 
and  convictions  had  the  civil  courts  were  open,  holding  their 
terms  as  usual,  disposing  of  cases  and  dispensing  justice  in  the 
usual  and  ordinary  manner. 


VIOLATION  OF  AUTHORITY  CHARGED. 

That  in  some  instances  arrests  were  made  outside  the  mili¬ 
tary  zone  and  at  a  time  when  martial  law  did  not  prevail,  and 
when  such  arrests  were  made  the  parties  were  turned  over  by 


204 

the  civil  authorities  to  the  military  authorities  for  detention, 
trial  and  punishment. 

“That  in  rendering  judgment  and  assessing  punishment  the 
parties  were  punished  by  terms  of  imprisonment  unknown  to 
the  statutes  in  excess  of  the  punishment  provided  for  such 
offenses  under  the  laws  of  the  state. 

“That  a  number  of  these  parties  were  sent  to  jail  and  many 
to  the  state  penitentiary  under  sentence  from  this  court-martial 
as  approved  by  the  governor. 

“That  no  threats  of  violence  qr  use  of  force  were  made  or 
had  against  the  judges  or  the  courts  at  any  time  during  the 
existence  of  the  disturbance  or  the  reign  of  martial  law. 

NO  INTIMIDATION  OF  JUSTICE. 

“That  great  feeling  and  interest  doubtless  prevailed  gener¬ 
ally  throughout  the  county,  but  the  existence  of  this  feeling  and 
its  effect  upon  the  grand  and  petit  juries  were  not  tested  by  the 
calling  of  a  grand  jury  or  the  submitting  of  the  charges  against 
these  persons  to  a  grand  jury,  and  no  attempt  was  made  to  try 
them  before  a  petit  jury. 

“The  officers  of  the  county,  after  the  declaration  of  martial 
law,  proceeded  upon  the  assumption  that  the  feeling  and  preju¬ 
dice  were  so  strong  as  to  prevent  the  operation  of  the  civil 
authorities,  together  with  a  further  belief  that  the  declaration 
of  martial  law  had  the  effect  of  suspending  and  nullifying  all 
constitutional  and  statutory  rights  of  the  accused.” — (From  the 
Sub-Committee  Report  of  United  States  Senator  Borah.) 

(b)  MICHIGAN  COPPER  MINERS’  STRIKE. 

(Report  of  the  Socialist  Investigating  Committee  on  the 
Calumet  Strike.) 

This  was  a  strike  of  all  the  miners,  about  13,000  in  number, 
in  practically  all  the  mines  of  the  district,  beginning  July  23, 
1913. 

The  demands  of  the  men  were  as  follows: 

An  eight-hour  day. 

A  minimum  wage  of  $3  a  day  for  men  in  the  mines. 

An  increase  of  35  cents  a  day  for  those  that  worked  above 
ground. 

Two  men  to  be  employed  on  each  drill. 

Recognition  of  the  Western  Federation  of  Miners. 

Organization  under  the  Western  Federation  of  Miners  had 
been  effected  in  1910,  about  90  per  cent  of  the  men  being  mem¬ 
bers.  Grievances  as  abovd  outlined  were  presented  to  the  man¬ 
agement  of  the  mines  on  July  6  by  the  local  organization  of 
the  Federation.  No  reply  of  any  kind  was  made  to  this  presen¬ 
tation.  The  management  of  one  mine,  the  Quincy,  added  to 
this  discourtesy  what  might  be  thought  the  gratuitous  insult  of 
returning  unopened  the  letter  of  the  organization.  Seven  days 
had  been  allowed  for  an  answer  to  the  communication  on  behalf 
of  the  men.  When  these  had  elapsed  and  no  reply  had  'been 
received,  the  matter  was  laid  before  the  members  in  the  shape 
of  a  referendum  vote  on  the  question  of  ordering  a  strike.  It 
resulted  in  more  than  7,000  votes  in  favor  of  a  strike  and  only 
126  votes  against  it.  When  this  vote  had  been  counted  and 
declared  a  meeting  was  called  on  July  22,  and  the  strike  was 
ordered  for  the  next  day.  The  men  left  the  mines  without  dis¬ 
order. 

It  should  be  remarked  that  copper  mining,  as  carried  on  in 
the  district,  requires  skill,  experience  and  great  physical  strength 
and  seems  to  be  attended  with  easily  preventable  dangers.  In 
some  respects  the  methods  in  use  appear  to  be  archaic  and  to 
work  unnecessary  hardship  upon  the  men.  For  instance,  the 


205 


/ 

ore  is  removed  in  small  cars  from  the  end  of  the  tunnel  to  the 
shaft,  but  neither  electricity  nor  mules  are  used,  men  pushing 
the  cars  along  the  rails,  often  with  great  difficulty.  Again, 
the  temperature  in  some  of  the  mines  is  very  high,  exceeding 
100  degrees,  and  no  adequate  means  seem  to  be  employed  to 
relieve  this  condition.  The  men  were  worked  ten  and  eleven 
hours  a  day.  The  custom  was  to  work  each  drill  with  only 
one  man  on  it,  a  practice  exceedingly  dangerous  and  arduous. 
By  the  method  of  contract  work  men  frequently  worked  a 
month  for  very  little  return  and  occasionally  for  almost  nothing. 
These  facts  alone  would  seem  to  indicate  that  working  condi¬ 
tions  stood  in  need  of  revision. 

As  soon  as  the  strike  was  declared,  the  mining  companies 
called  upon  the  governor  of  Michigan  for  troops,  although  there 
had  been  no  disturbance.  It  is  alleged  that  special  trains  for 
the  transportation  of  the  troops  had  been  prepared  before  the 
actual  request  was  received.  The  governor  immediately  called 
out  the  entire  militia  of  the  state,  which  arrived  in  the  district 
as  rapidly  as  it  could  be  transported  thither.  Many  of  the  sol¬ 
diers  were  quartered  in  a  large  armory  belonging  to  the  Calu¬ 
met  &  Hecla  Mining  Company,  and  apparently  erected  for  such 
emergencies.  We  understand  that  the  state  pays  rent  for  the 
use  of  this  armory. 

The  mining  companies  had  also  made  arrangements  with 
large  detective  agencies,  such  as  Ascher  agency  in  New  York 
and  the  Waddell-Mahon  agency,  to  supply  armed  guards.  Sev¬ 
eral  hundred  of  these  came  from  distant  points,  many  being  re¬ 
cruited  in  New  York  City.  They  appeared  in  the  district  heavily 
armed.  Other  guards  were  enlisted  in  the  vicinity,  until  about 
1,600  were  employed.  These  the  sheriff  of  the  county  swore 
in  as  deputies. 

Up  to  this  time  no  disorder  of  any  kind  had  appeared.  A 
majority  of  the  miners  are  Finns,  well  known  to  be  of  a  quiet 
and  orderly  disposition.  Others  were  Croatians,  Italians  and 
English. 

It  appears  from  the  many  affidavits  we  have  examined  and 
the  testimony  we  have  heard  that  the  armed  guards  and  the 
militiamen  from  the  beginning  manifested  an  overbearing,  ar¬ 
rogant  and  exasperating  attitude.  They  were  employed  not  only 
in  surrounding  the  mines  and  preventing  the  approach  of  strikers, 
but  likewise  occupied  the  highways  and  in  scores  of  instances, 
as  appears  from  sworn  testimony,  they  assaulted  and  beat  men 
that  were  peaceably  walking  in  public  roads.  So  far  as  the 
testimony  and  the  affidavits  have  revealed,  all  of  these  assaults 
were  unprovoked  except  that  in  a  few  instances  strikers  or 
other  persons  had  been  heard  to  call  out  “Scabs!”  on  the  ap¬ 
pearance  of  the  guards  or  of  the  men  hired  to  take  the  strikers’ 
places.  We  shall  deal  with  some  of  these  assaults  hereafter. 
One  species  of  annoyance  to  which  the  strikers  were  almost 
daily  subjected  was  attack  upon  their  processions.  Whenever 
c^ne  of  these  appeared  the  guards  or  the  militiamen,  or  both, 
mounted  and  on  foot,  would  attempt  to  break  it  up  and  disperse 
it,  sometimes  riding  their  horses  through  it,  and  sometimes 
pursuing  the  paraders  to  the  sidewalks,  and  even  into  their 
houses.  On  at  least  twd  occasions  soldiers  wearing  the  uniform 
of  the  National  Guard  tore  down  the  American  flag  in  the  hands 
of  paraders  and  trampled  upon  it.  So  far  as  we  have  been  able 
to  learn  these  attacks  also  were  unprovoked  by  any  action  on 
the  part  of  the  strikers  and  seem  to' have  created  much  of  the 
resentment  the  strikers  felt.  Much  graver  accusations,  and 
some  of  a  shocking  character  are  made  against  the  behavior 
of  the  militia.  These  seem  to  have  gone  without  adequate  invest" 
tigation  by  the  military  authorities  of  the  state,  although  they 


206 


cast  most  serious  imputations  upon  the  discipline  and  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  National  Guard  of  Michigan. 

The  guards  made  many  arrests,  for  the  most  part  on  charges 
that  could  not  be  sustained,  with  the  result  that  the  jails  were 
soon  overflowing  with  men  under  arrest  whose  entire  innocence 
of  any  offending  was  apparent  as  soon  as  there  was  hearing. 
So  common  did  this  practice  become  that  the  public  prosecutor 
was  moved  to  protest  against  it. 

Many  affidavits  made  by  the  armed  guards  after  they  had 
ceased  to  be  employed  in  the  district  declare  that  the  irritating 
conduct  of  the  guards,  at  least,  was  by  the  direct  instruction 
of  their  superiors.  The  affidavits  agree  in  this,  and  report  many 
orders  that  would  seem  to  be  calculated  deliberately  to  insure 
disorder.  The  practice  of  breaking  up  parades,  for  instance, 
seems  to  have  been  planned  with  the  expectation  that  the 
strikers  would  be  goaded  thereby  into  some  overt  act.  Some 
of  the  orders  reported  in  these  affidavits,  if  they  meant  anything 
at  all,  could  only  mean  that  retaliation  from  the  strikers  was 
desired,  and  the  business  of  the  guards  was  to  arouse  it. 

After  the  strike  had  been  in  progress  a  few  weeks,  officers 
of  the  Western  Federation  of  Miners  from  outside  the  district 
were  sent  to  take  charge  of  it,  among  them  eventually  the  fed¬ 
eration’s  president,  Charles  H.  Moyer.  The  assertion  has  been 
made  frequently  that  the  federation  instigated  the  strike  and 
led  it  from  its  inception.  This  we  find  to  be  without  founda¬ 
tion  in  fact.  The  strike  originated  strictly  within  the  local 
organization  and  was  at  first  conducted  by  the  local  officers  on 
their  own  sole  responsibility. 

So  great  and  important  was  the  part  played  in  this  strike 
by  the  business  men  in  the  community  that  we  feel  called 
upon  to  speak,  in  some  detail  of  this  phase  of  the  record.  At 
first  the  business  men  in  general  were  disposed  to  view  the 
strikers  with  toleration  and  even  with  some  sympathy.  But 
the  problem  of  feeding  so  many  strikers  and  their  families  was 
extremely  difficult,  the  demands  upon  relief  funds  of  the  federa¬ 
tion  were  heavy,  and  a  large  sum  of  money  was  weekly 
withdrawn  from  the  treasury  for  this  purpose.  To  ease  the 
burden  somewhat  the  federation  management  adopted  the  plan 
of  establishing  commissary  stores  on  a  plan  like  that  of  co-op¬ 
erative  enterprises.  Great  quantities  of  provisions  and  groceries 
were  bought  at  wholesale,  transported  in  car  load  lots  and 
placed  in  stores  the  federation  had  rented,  and  from  these 
strikers  obtained  their  supplies  on  coupons  issued  by  the  relief 
committee. 

These  stores  began  at  once  to  do  a  very  large  business,  esti¬ 
mated  at  present  at  about  $37,000  a  week.  The  loss  of  so  great 
a  volume  of  trade  was  instantly  and  acutely  felt  by  the  local 
merchants.  It  gave  to  the  strike  a  very  different  aspect  in  their 
eyes.  Almost  at  once,  their  bitter  complaints  began  to  be  heard. 
It  seems  to  be  quite  true  that,  in  many  minds,- the  cause  of 
the  strikers  ceased  to  be  reasonable  or  tolerable  as  soon  as  it 
produced  this  marked  change  in  trade  conditions.  Certain  busi¬ 
ness  interests  were  necessarily  allied  with  the  companies  and 
these  took  the  lead  in  voicing  a  protest  against  the  longer  con¬ 
tinuation  of  the  strike.  Certain  elements  of  racial  prejudice 
are  not  to  be  ignored  in  these  situation^.  The  strikers  were  in¬ 
terfering  with  business,  they  were  largely  foreigners  who  spoke 
a  different  tongue  and  in  a  short  time  they  became,  to  a  part 
of  the  business  community,  the  objects  of  an  extraordinary  and 
violent  hatred  that  in  a  sobering  way  recalls  the  situation  of 
the  negroes  in  the  South. 

The  growing  bitterness  of  the  business  element  manifested 
itself  in  public  meetings  and  in  the  formation  of  a  body  known 
as  the  Citizens’  Alliance.  Inasmuch  as  this  association  has  been 


207 


widely  believed  to  have  been  organized  to  preserve  order  and 
uphold  the  law,  violated  by  the  strikers,  it  is  well  to  record 
here  the  indubitable  fact  that  it  had  no  such  basis  but  was 
formed  for  the  reasons  indicated.  The  law  had  been  violated 
for  many  weeks  and  in  many  ways  by  the  armed  guards,  by  the 
militia  and  by  the  mining  companies  and  many  scenes  of  dis¬ 
order  had  been  caused  by  the  same  agencies  without  any  pro¬ 
test  from  the  persons  that  formed  the  Citizens’  Alliance. 

The  alliance  soon  became  an  active  force  to  assist  the  armed 
domination  of  the  district.  It  was  felt  that  business  would  not 
be  restored  until  the  strike  was  settled  and  the  only  way  to 
settle  it  was  that  the  foreigners  and  the  Western  Federation 
of  Miners,  which  were  causing  all  the  trouble,  should  be  de¬ 
feated  and  the  strikers  forced  to  return  to  their  work.  A  large 
white  button  with  red  letters  was  designed  for  members  of  the 
alliance,  all  of  whom  were  exhorted  to  wear  the  emblem  in  plain 
sight  at  all  times  as  a  declaration  of  faith.  Men  wearing  these 
buttons  became  conspicuous  in  the  assaults  that  the  guards 
made  and  the  riots  that  the  guards  precipitated.  On  one  occa¬ 
sion,  for  instance,  the  alliance  held  a  largely  attended  meeting 
at  Houghton.  At  the  close  the  proposal  was  made  that  the 
federation’s  headquarters  at  the  neighboring  town  of  South 
Range  should  be  visited.  It  is  alleged  that  the  local  command¬ 
ant  of  the  militia  opened  the  armory  and  allowed  the  members 
of  the  alliance  to  arm  themselves.  At  least  it  is  certain  that 
the  crowd  of  alliance  men  that  presently  boarded  a  special 
train  for  South  Range  was  armed  with  rifles.  Arrived  at  South 
Range  the  mob  broke  into  the  office  of  the  federation  branch, 
smashed  the  furniture,  broke  open  the  desks,  carried  away  all 
the  papers,  and  destroyed  many  books  of  coupons.  The  hour 
was  after  midnight  and  there  was  no  one  at  the  office  to  offer 
resistance.  The  secretary  of  the  branch  lived  over  the  office. 
It  seems  probable  that  he  had  rendered  himself  obnoxious  to 
the  armed  guards  because  earlier  in  the  night  he  had  admitted 
to  his  rooms  two  strikers  that  were  running  for  their  lives  from 
drunken  guards  they  had  met  in  the  highway. 

The  mob,  having  wrecked  the  office  below,  now  proceeded 
upstairs  to  seize  the  secretary.  He  begged  them  to  go  away, 
as  he  was  nursing  a  sick  wife  and  a  sick  infant.  The  mob 
retired,  but  soon  returned  in  larger  numbers  and  broke  in  the 
door  of  the  secretary’s  rooms.  After  repeated  warnings  to 
them  to  desist  he  fired  two  shots,  one  of  which  entered  the 
stomach  of  one  of  the  rioters.  The  mob  then  descended  the 
stairs  but  seemed  to  have  fired  several  shots  from  the  'street 
at  the  house,  thereafter  dispersing.  At  7  o’clock  in  the  morning 
the  secretary  was  arrested  and  is  now  on  $7,000  bail  on  the 
charge  of  attempt  to  commit  murder.  The  wounded  man 
recovered. 

This  event  was  widely  telegraphed  about  the  country  as 
a  fierce  battle  between  strikers  barricaded  in  the  hall  and 
deputies  sent  to  arrest  them.  It  offers  a  fair  example  of  the 
false  reports  with  which  the  country  has  been  deluged  from  this 
district  since  the  strike  began. 

We  may  cite  here  another  from  many  possible  illustrations 
of  the  savagery  and  reckless  disregard  of  life  that  have  ter¬ 
rorized  the  region  ever  since  the  armed  guards  were  loosed 
upon  it.  Each  mine  is  surrounded  by  a  village  of  miners  and 
each  village  has  been  under  a  practical  despotism  to  be  likened 
only  to  that  of  a  feudal  barony  in  the  early  part  of  the  middle 
ages.  One  of  these  villages  is  Seeberville,  near  Painesdale,  a 
station  on  the  Copper  Range  Railroad  and  about  eight  miles 
from  Houghton.  At  Seeberville,  Joseph  Putrich,  a  Croatian, 
kept  a  boarding  house  for  miners.  On  August  14,  between  5 
and  6  o’clock  in  the  afternoon,  two  of  these  boarders  returned 


208 


from  a  visit  to  South  Range  and  alighted  from  the  train  at 
Painesdale  station.  To  avoid  a  long  detour  the  people  of 
Seeberville  have  been  accustomed  to  use  a  short  path  by  the 
railroad  track  to  the  main  road.  These  two  men  started  to 
walk  down  this  path.  A  mine  guard  ordered  them  nor  to  use 
the  path  as  it  was  on  the  mine  company’s  property.  Knowing 
no  reason  why  they  should  not  walk  where  they  had  always 
walked  they  continued  on  the  path  and  went  home.  About  an 
hour  later  they  were  playing  a  kind  of  ten  pin  game  in  the 
yard  of  Putrich’s  house  when  six  armed  guards  and  a  trainman 
boss  fropi  the  mine  appeared  at  the  fence,  and  shouted  at  them. 
The  two  men  were  badly  frightened,  ran  into  the  house,  which 
was  full  of  boarders.  The  guards  surrounded  the  house  and 
without  parley  or  words  fired  into  the  doors  and  open  windows. 
Two  of  the  boarders  were  killed  and  two  were  badly  wounded. 
Mrs.  Putrich  was  in  the  living  room  and  narrowly  escaped 
injury,  a  bullet  grazing  the  head  of  the  infant  in  her  arms. 
More  than  30  shots  were  fired  upon  these  defenseless  persons, 
the  guards  firing  until  their  revolvers  were  emptied.  The  two 
men  that  had  walked  on  the  forbidden  path  were  not  hurt. 
This  wanton  slaughter  was  termed  “a  battle  with  strikers.”  It 
is  of  a  piece  with  others  that  bore  the  same  designation.  Sub¬ 
sequently,  four  of  the  guards  concerned  in  the  shooting  were 
arrested  and  released  on  bail.  The  sheriff  of  the  county  has 
since  admitted  the  fact,  otherwise  incredible,  that  these  men, 
still  carrying  arms,  are  still  employed  by  him  as  deputies.  We 
do  not  know  how  it  would  be  possible  to  draw  a  stronger  indict¬ 
ment  of  the  kind  of  government  that  has  been  inflicted  on  the 
people  of  this  region  since  the  strike  began. 

The  bitter  feeling  of  the  Citizens’  Alliance  was  greatly  in¬ 
tensified  after  the  terrible  disaster  of  Christmas  eve  at  the 
Italian  hall  in  Calumet  when  a  cry  of  “Fire!”  caused  a  panic  in 
a  crowded  assembly  and  72  persons,  a  majority  of  them  children, 
were  crushed  to  death  on  the  -stairs.  The  wealthy  citizens  of 
the  neighborhood  raised  a  relief  fund  -of,  about  $25,000  for  the 
benefit  of  the  afflicted  families,  but  these,  uniformly  refused  to 
accept  the  charity.  In  any  community  where  normal  conditions 
prevailed  this  refusal  could  not  have  angered  anyone,  since 
surely  it  is  within  every  man’s  province  to  decline  charity  if  he 
so  wills.  But  in  this  instance  the  donors  were  stirred  to  extraor¬ 
dinary  resentment  by  the  rejection  of  their  gifts,  for  which 
rejection  the  officers  of  the  Western  Federation  of  Miners  were 
blamed.  We  have  investigated  this  matter  and  can  find  no  just 
reason  for  this  blame.  It  was  the  unanimous  and  spontaneous 
desire  of  the  families  that  had  suffered  in  the  panic  to  accept 
no  charity  from  the  sources  that  offered  it  in  this  instance  and 
we  much  doubt  if  the  officers  of  the  federation  could  have 
changed  this  feeling  if  they  had  tried. 

The  resentment  of  the  Citizens’  Alliance  and  of  the  sub¬ 
scribers  to  the  $25,000  fund  was  increased  by  the  statements  of 
some  witnesses  that  the  man  that  shouted  “Fire”  that  day  at 
Italian  hall  'wore  a  Citizens’  Alliance  button.  Even  if  this  were 
the  fact,  it  would,  of  course,  reflect  no  responsibility  upon  the 
alliance  and  possibly  none  upon  the  man  that  wore  the  button. 
These  buttons  were  worn  by  a  great  many  persons  in  and  about 
Calumet.  All  the  armed  guards  wore  them  and  many  of  these 
were  desperate  and  lawless  persons,  recruited  in  the  slums  of 
cities.  In  Calumet  they  were  very  often  drunk  and  almost 
always  quarrelsome  and  reckless.  It  was  part  of  their  employ¬ 
ment  to  break  up  gatherings  of  strikers;  they  did  such  things 
frequently.  The  day  was  one  on  which  dissolute  men  are 
accustomed  to  drink  freely.  If  one  such  man  in  an  inebriated 
state  should  take  it  into  his  muddled  mind  to  disturb  a  strikers’ 
assembly  by  shouting  “Fire!”  at  the  door,  the  fact  would  not 


209 


be  wonderful  under  the  existing  circumstances.  This  explana¬ 
tion  would  seem  far  more  reasonable  than  that  a  panic  should 
start  otherwise  in  a  place  wfiere  there  was  no  fire,  no  sign  of  fire, 
and  from  the  solid  construction  of  the  building  (which  was  new)! 
and  the  most  careful  arrangements  of  those  in  'charge,  no  chance 
of  fire. 

Even  if  this  theory  be  correct,  no  just  man  would  hold  the 
Citizens’  Alliance  as  responsible  for  the  accident,  but  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  Alliance  seemed  to  be  exasperated  by  the  mere 
statements  about  the  button  and  its  wearer.  The  animosity  thus 
engendered  culminated  on  the  night  of  December  26  in  the 
mobbing,  shooting  and  deportation  of  President  Moyer.  We 
have  carefully  investigated  this  event,  of  which  it  is  difficult 
to  speak  with  the  restraint  and  moderation  That  we  feel  is 
incumbent  upon  us  in  reporting  on  these  grave  matters.  No 
shadow  of  doubt  is  left  in  our  minds  that  Mr.  Moyer’s  account 
of  the  outrage  is  exactly  true,  except  in  the  particular  that  he 
much  understated  its  brutality  and  savage  cruelty,  a  fact  under¬ 
standable  from  his  weakened  condition  after  the  treatment  he 
received.  It  is  beyond  question  that  a  mob  in  which  were  many 
citizens  of  Hancock  and  vicinity  deemed  to  be  extremely  re¬ 
spectable  .  entered  Mr.  Moyer’s  room,  seized  him,  beat  him, 
shot  him  in  the  back,  hustled  him  through  the  streets  and  across 
the  bridge  to  the  railroad  station,  beating  him  and  savagely 
kicking  him  while  he  was  pinioned  and  defenseless.  Finally 
he  was  thrust  upon  a  railroad  train  and  carried  under  an  armed 
guard  out  of  the  state,  being  threatened  with  instant  death  if 
he  returned.  His  companion,  Charles  H.  Tanner,  auditor  of 
the  Western  Federation,  received  almost  equally  inhuman  treat¬ 
ment  and  was  deported  with  him. 

This  astounding  outbreak  of  the  lynching  spirit  in  Michigan 
is  a  foul  blot  upon  the  state.  How  far  the  Citizens’  Alliance 
is  concerned  with  law  and  order  may  be  judged  from  the  fact 
that  for  an  outrage  so  monstrous  and  disgraceful  it  has  never 
expressed  the  least  concern,  and  many  of  its  members,  if  they 
were  not  participants  in  the  mob,  have  since  been  quoted  in 
approval  of  the  mob’s  vile  work.  And  we  cannot  avoid  here 
the  duty  of  condemning  in  the  strongest  terms  the  newspapers 
that  have  tried  to  excuse  or  palliate  the  mob’s  acts,  and  the 
correspondents  and  news  agencies  •  that  sought  in  subtle  and 
adroit  ways  To  discredit  Mr.  Moyer’s  absolutely  terrific  story. 

If  such  agencies  for  the  poisoning  of  news  and  the  perverting 
of  public  opinion  are  to  go  unrebuked,  we  may  well  and  seriously 
question  whether  we  do  not  live  in  a  condition  of  practical 
anarchy,  and  whether  any  man  that  advocates  any  cause  dis- 
:asteful  to  the  powerful  has  any  rights,  or  any  chance  of  pro¬ 
motion  under  the  laws. 

As  to  the  perversion  of  news,  that,  from  the  first,  has 
attended  this  strike,  we  have  already  said,  with  examples.  In 
iddition,  we  have  space  to  dwell  here  on  only  the  one  subject 
>f  reports  of  violence  by  strikers.  These  have  been  spread 
iroadcast  over  the  country,  and  have  created  in  the  public  mind 
i  totally  false  idea  of  conditions.  We  have  investigated  a  great 
nany  of  these  allegations,  and  have  found  that  the  actual  mani- 
estations  of  a  spirit  of  violence  among  the  strikers  have  been 
'ery  few  and  unimportant.  On  one  occasion,  passengers  at- 
empting  to  board  a  train  found  themselves  pushed  off  the  steps 
'y  armed  guards,  and  discovered  that  the  car  was  filled  with 
trike  breakers.  Whereupon  a  shower  of  stones  broke  all  the 
/indows  on  one  side  of  the  car.  A  woman  beat  a  strike  breaker 
1  the  face  with  a  broom.  Some  strike  breakers  have  been  hooted 
nd  jeered.  This  constitutes  about  all  the  veritable  outbreaks 
f  violence  on  the  part  of  the  strikers.  We  have  looked  into 
he  stories  of  dynamite  explosions  and  dynamite  plots  and  find 


210 


■ 

that  without  exception  they  have  the  plainest  evidences  of  such 
“plants”  as  were  made  in  the  Lawrence  strike,  and  that  it  is 
ridiculous  to  believe  the  strikers  had  anything  to  do  with  the 
‘plots.”  In  one  other  case  the  charge  remains  undetermined. 
A  guard,  without  provocation,  shot  and  killed  a  striker.  The 
next  day  some  unknown  person  killed  the  guard.  There  is 
an  assumption  in  this  case,  but  no  evidence.  Many  cases  we 
have  found  in  which  armed  guards,  usually  drunk,  were  the 
cowardly  aggressors,  attacking  unarmed  and  unoffending  men, 
women  and  even  children.  In  spite  of  these  provocations,  the 
patience  and  self-control  of  the  strikers  has  been  remarkable 
and  deserves  the  attention  of  the  country.  Throughout  the 
troubles,  the  strikers  seem  to  have  manifested  an  almost  singu¬ 
lar  forbearance.  All  of  your  committee  are  familiar  with  strikes. 
Not  one  of  us  can  recall  another  strike  of  this  size  and  lasting 
as  long  that  has  been  equally  free  from  overt  acts  by  strikers, 
and  few  in  which  the  provocations  to  resentment  have  been  so 
great. 

But  while  the  strikers  have  been  in  the  main  law-abiding,  we 
must  observe  that  the  mine  companies  have  been  astonishingly 
reckless  of  many  laws.  Putting  aside  now  the  bloody  deeds  of 
their  armed  guards  and  agents,  we  instance  only  the  federal 
statutes  against  peonage,  which  these  companies  have  broken 
innumerable  times  and  with  impunity  by  bringing  men  from 
New  York.  The  affidavits  of  scores  of  the  victims  of  the  peon¬ 
age  practices  leave  no  doubt  of  this  fact,  and  we  call  for  federal 
action  against  these  law-breakers.  Four  hundred  penniless 
miners  have  been  arrested,  chiefly  on  baseless  charges.  We  are 
not  yet  ready  to  believe  that  for  the  wealthy  and  powerful  that 
trample  upon  our  laws  there  is  no  punishment,  but  if  these 
glaring  offenses  by  the  companies  go  unpunished,  we  must  admit 
that  the  presumption  of  the  immunity  of  the  rich  will  be  enorm¬ 
ously  strengthened. 

We  believe  that  all  of  the  demands  of  the  strikers  were  just 
and  reasonable.  Beyond  a  doubt  they  should  have  been  granted. 
Probably  no  other  employing  companies  in  this  country  could 
so  easily  afford  to  concede  such  moderate  requests.  Among 
these  companies,  and  appearing  as  the  holding  company  for 
most  of  the  others,  is  the  Great  Calumet  and  Hecla,  which  has 
made  a  larger  annual  profit  on  a  smaller  investment  and  for  a 
larger  period  than  any  other  similar  enterprise  in  the  United 
States  and  possibly  in  the  world.  Fabulous  fortunes  have  been 
built  from  its  great  profits.  Its  wealth  may  be  gauged  from 
the  following  facts  taken  from  the  sworn  statements  of  the 
president  of  the  company,  also  published  in  Copper  Hand  Book 
about  it. 

It  has  a  capital  stock  of  $2,500,000,  of  which  less  than  half, 
or  only  $12  of  >  each  $25  share  has  ever  been  paid  in.  That  is 
to  say,  the  cash  actually  invested  in  it  has  been  $1,200,000.  On 
this  investment  has  been  paid,  to  and  including  1912,  dividends 
to  the  amount  of  $112,500,000,  or  $1,125  a  share,  or  about  $100 
of  profits  for  every  dollar  of  investment.  The  actual  report, 
February  27,  1913,  gave  the  value  of  each  share  as  $540,  $12 
having  been  paid  for  it.  The  dividends  in  the  last  few  years 
have  been  as  follows: 


* 

Per  cent. 

Per  cent. 

1897. . 

. 160 

1905 . 

. 200 

1898 . 

. 200 

1906 . 

1899 . 

. 400 

1907 . 

. 260 

1900 . 

. 280 

1908 . 

.  80 

1901 . 

. 180 

1909 . 

. 109 

1902 . 

. 100 

1910 . 

. 116 

1903 . 

. 140 

1911 . 

.  96 

1904 . 

. 160 

1912 . 

.  72 

211 

Besides  these  great  profits,  the  salaries  paid  to  officers  and 
directors  seem  beyond  all  reason.  The  president  of  the  com- 
pany  receives  $100,000  a  year.  Mr.  McNaughton  in  his  capacities 
as  vice-president,  general  manager  and  director,  receives  $85  000 

WM0a  year.eCretarJ  *"d  tre3SUrer  3nd  each  director 

In  recent  years  the  company  has  bought  out  of  its  surplus 
profits  and  by  issuing  securities,  a  controlling  interest  in  seven- 
teen  other  mining  companies,  and  now  in  addition  to  its  huge 
dividends  earns  the  interest  on  $8,519,000  of  notes  that  it  issued 
to  aid  in  making  these  purchases. 

To  a  company  earning  such  enormous  profits,  such  demands 
employes  as  were  made  in  this  instance  were  the  veriest 
trihes.  That  such  companies  should  contemptuously  refuse  to 
so  much  as  treat  with  their  employes  seems  to  us  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  instances  we  have  ever  encountered  of  the 
arrogance  of  wealth,  as  the  companies’  method  of  combatting 

la wl e s s ne s ga  r  ^  S  one  of  the  most  alarming  instances  of  wealth’s 

We  find  the  following  conclusions: 

1.  That  the  strike  that  has  caused  such  a  loss  of  life  and 

such  great  losses  of  money  to  the  people  of  Michigan  and  the 

United  States  was  entirely  unnecessary  and  due  wholly  to  the 
unreasonable  and  overbearing  attitude  of  the  mining  companies. 

.  That  the  employment  of  militia  was  entirely  unneces- 
sary,  worked  infinite  harm  and  did  no  good,  while  the  use  of 
private  guards  to  supersede,  with  their  rifles  and  drunken  whims, 
the  constituted  authorities,  has  been  most  clearly  demonstrated 
to  be  a  great,  perilous  and  intolerable  evil. 

•  tliat  We  oug^t  to  ac*d  our  conviction  that  it  was 

within  the  power  of  the  governor  of  Michigan  to  end  this  la¬ 
mentable  conflict,  if  he  had  earnestly  sought  to  do  so.  At  the 

time  of  our  visit,  nothing  was  needed  to  secure  the  return  of 
the  men  to  the  mines  but  the  recognition  of  the  miners’  union 
A  demand  so  moderate,  so  reasonable,  and  so  much  to  the 
advantage  of  the  community,  could  hardly  have  been  resisted, 
if  the  governor  had  seen  fit  to  add  to  it  his  approval.  We  pro¬ 
foundly  regret  that  he  did  not  take  advantage  of  so  great  an 
opportunity  to  serve  his  times,  further  the  cause  of  justice,  and 
advance  the  condition  of  the  working  class. 

VICTOR  L.  BERGER, 

SEYMOUR  STEDMAN, 

CHARLES  EDWARD  RUSSELL, 

c  .  ..  ^  „  Committee. 

Socialists  Demand  Justice  for  Michigan  Strikers. 

TELEGRAM. 


~  j  „rM  January  13,  1914. 

Hon  Woodrow  Wilson,  President  U.  S.  A.,  Washington,  D.  C. 

I  he  National  Executive  Committee  of  the  Socialist  party 
commissioned  Victor  L.  Berger,  Charles  Edward  Russell  and 
seymour  Stedman  to  investigate  the  Michigan  strike.  They 
eport  claims  of  men  just.  Also  report  companies  guilty  of 
peonage  and  importation  of  sixteen  hundred  gunmen  from  out- 
1 .  Leaders  of  miners  maltreated  and  deported.  General 
eign  of  terror  on  part  of  gunmea;  the  strikers  firm  and  law- 
biding. 

On  basis  of  above  report,  and  on  behalf  of  Socialist  party, 
ve  demand  congressional  investigation  of  situation. 

VICTOR  L.  BERGER, 

GEO.  H.  GOEBEL, 
ADOLPH  GERMER, 
JAMES  H.  MAURER, 

J.  STITT  WILSON, 

Executive  Committee. 


212 

*  (c)  COLORADO  COAL  MINERS’  STRIKE. 

The  State  of  Colorado  has  a  democratic  governor  and  ; 
democratic  legislature.  If  the  professions  of  the  democrats 
politicians  are  to  be  believed,  it  ought  to  be  a  state  where  th< 
rights  of  the  workingmen  are  strictly  protected,  “special  privi 
lege”  is  curbed  and  justice  is  rigidly  enforced.  Sometime  ag( 
the  miners  in  the  state  of  Colorado  struck  in  order  to  gaii 
certain  concessions  from  the  coal  companies,  principal  of  whicl 
is  the  Colorado  Fuel  and  Iron  Company  of  which  John  D 
Rockefeller  Jr.  is  the  dominant  figure. 

The  Miners’  Demands. 

Professor  Seligman,  professor  of  political  economy  at  Col 
umbia,  thus  sets  forth  the  situation  in  an  article  in  his  “Anna 
list”  article  (quoted  from  “The  Literary  Digest,”  May  16 
1914): 

“The  demands  of  the  miners  which  led  to  the  strike  wer* 
seven  in  number: 

“1.  The  eight-hour  day. 

“2.  Pay  for  narrow  and  dead  work. 

“3.  A  check  weighman  without  interference  of  compan- 
officials. 

“4.  The  right  to  trade  in  any  store  they  pleased. 

“5.  The  abolition  of  the  criminal  guard  system. 

“6.  Ten  per  cent  advance  in  wages. 

“7.  Recognition  of  the  union. 

“Of  these  seven  demands  five  are  guaranteed  under  sever* 
penalty  by  the  laws  of  the  State  of  Colorado.  ...  Is  it  not 
remarkable  commentary  on  the  state  of  American  civilizatior 
that  individuals  should  be  compelled  to  resort  to  a  strike  ir 
order  to  enforce  a  series  of  laws  which  it  is  the  obligation  of  th 
employers  to  obey  and  of  the  State  to  enforce?  That  these  law: 
were  habitually  and  persistently  disregarded  is  claimed  by  th? 
unions  and  is  virtually  substantiated  by  official  statements  ir 
the  reports  of  the  factory  inspectors  in  Colorado.  .  .  . 

“It  is  claimed  by  the  operators  that  this  is  a  fight  against  the 
closed  shop,  whereas  in  reality  it  is  a  fight  against  the  recogni 
tion  of  the  union.  The  two  things  are  by  no  means  the  same 
The  closed  shop  means  that  none  but  union  men  may  be  em 
ployed;  the  recognition  of  the  union  means  that  the  employer! 
should  consent  to  discuss  matters  of  common  interest  with  th< 
representatives  of  the  union.  .  .  .  Experience  has  shown  tha 
the  individual  ‘free’  laborer  ordinarily  stands  but  slight  chance 
of  redress,  and  that  progress  has  come  only  through  the  sub 
stitution  of  collective  bargaining.” 

Conduct  of  the  Militia. 

Immediately  after  the  calling  of  the  strike,  the  mine  owner.* 
employed  a  private  army  of  thugs  and  gunmen  to  harrass  the 
miners,  while  Governor  Ammons,  the  democratic  governor  o 
Colorado,  called  out  the  militia. 

From  the  very  beginning  the  conduct  of  the  militia,  re 
cruited,  in  many  cases,  from  the  ranks  of  the  mine  owners’  em 
ployes,  was  lawless  beyond  belief,  and  partisan  to  the  mine 
owners  in  every  particular.  A  committee  appointed  at  the  sug 
gestion  of  the  governor  to  investigate  the  conduct  of  the  Col 
orado  National  Guard  reported  among  other  things  as  follows 
(From  Report  of  the  Committee  Appointed  at  the  Suggestion  o 
the  Governor  of  Colorado  to  Investigate  the  Conduct  of  the 
Colorado  National  Guard  During  the  Coal  Strike  of 
1913-1914.) 

When  citizens  have  protested  to  General  Chase  concern¬ 
ing  the  immoral  'conduct  of  the  militia,  his  answer  has  been  tc 


213 

call  such  accusations  lies,  and  loftily  to  refer  to  such  stories  as 
“besmirching  the  soldier’s  uniform.”  Robberies  and  holdups 
and  militiamen  he  disposes  of  in  the  same  way;  but  the  in¬ 
stances  of  this  sort  of  valorous  conduct  are  far  too  numerous, 
too  varied  in  circumstances  and  scattered  over  too  wide  a  ter¬ 
ritory  to  be  so  simply  gotten  rid  of.  They  range  from  a  forced 
loan  of  twenty-five  cents;  or  whiskey  “for  the  captain”;  or  a 
compulsory  gift  of  three  dollars;  or  whiskey,  gin,  cigars  and 
champagne;  or  a  ton  of  coal,  to  the  downright  robbery  of  $300, 
and  other  considerable  sums  of  money,  with  watches  and  other 
small  pieces  of  property. 

Striking  miners  are  not  alone  the  victims  of  false  arrest  and 
imprisonment.  A  merchant,  of  twenty-five  years’  standing,  was 
arrested  in  his  own  doorway,  because  he  would  not  “get  off 
the  street  when  ordered  to  do  so  by  a  trooper  who  was  driving 
before  his  horse  women  and  children  on  the  sidewalk  of  the 
principal  street  of  Trinidad  on  a  crowded  Saturday  evening. 
A.  railroad  man  was  arrested  while  performing  his  duty,  and 
jailed  over  night,  other  railroad  men — a  train  crew _ were  ar¬ 

rested  Christmas  morning.  The  railroad  companies'  rule  and 
the  orders  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  are  alike 
of  no  importance  to  the  militia.  They  will  “tear  up  the  tracks’" 
or  “take  an  engine”  by  force  if  it  suits  them  to  do  so.  These 
cases  well  illustrate  puerilities  of  these  untrained  officers  of  the 
militia;  but,  as  one  of  the  militiamen  is  reported  to  have  said, 
“We  have  to  do  something  to  scare  the  people.  One  man  was 
arrested  because  he  would  not  trust  a  militiaman  for  a  pint  of 
whiskey,  another  apparently  because  he  gave  some  very  su¬ 
perior  whiskey  to  a  militiaman,  for  which  he  was  taken  from 
Segundo  to  Trinidad  and  kept  two  days  in  jail.  Another  peace¬ 
able  American  citizen  was  arrested  on  the  pretense  that  he 
was  a  burglar.  General  Chase  himself  threatened  the  arrest  of 
the  deputy  district  attorneys;  hence  it  is  not  surprising  that 
minor  military  officers  have  interfered  with  the  duties  of  other 
civil  officers,  and  have  disarmed  a  deputy  sheriff  and  a  con¬ 
stable  who  were  not  mine  guards. 

TRYING  TO  “PERSUADE”  STRIKERS  TO  RETURN  TO 

WORK. 

The  militia  have  tried  to  persuade  strikers  to  go  back  to 
Work,  in  some  instance  threatening  and  abusing  them  at  the 
same  time;  a  major  offers  to  release  an  arrested  union  man  if 
he  will  work  in  the  mine;  mine  guards  have  given  orders  ta 
militiamen  as  to  the  arrest  and  release  of  strikers,  just  as  the 
coal  company’s  attorney  appears  to  have  advised  Chase  and 
Boughton,  and  a  mine  superintendent  to  have  given  orders  to 
militiamen  as  to  who  should  travel  a  public  road,  or  whether 
a  military  pass  should  be  cancelled;  militiamen  were  present 
when  a  Polish  ex-soldier,  arriving  as  a  strike-breaker,  was  of¬ 
fered  by  a  mine  superintendent*  a  deputy’s  star,  a  six-shooter 
and  a  rifle — “an  easy  job  and  good  pay” — provided  he  could 
shoot. 

The  military  authorities,  while  professing  intense  fairness, 
have  allowed  the  coal  operators  to  import  strike-breakers,  in 
direct  violation  of  the  state  law  passed  in  1911  forbidding  the 
importation  of  laborers  into  this  state  by  means  of  false  repre¬ 
sentation  or  false  advertisement.  It  is  a  proven  fact  that  the 
majority  of  workmen  enticed  into  the  mines  since  the  inaugura¬ 
tion  of  this  strike  have  been  deceived  as  to  the  existence  of  a 
strike,  or  rate  of  pay,  or  both.  In  spite  of  this  open  and  fla¬ 
grant  violation  of  the  plain  letter  and  spirit  of  the  statute,  the 
militia  have  met  the  trains  bearing  these  deceived  workmen, 
barring  from  the  vicinity  of  the  depots  all  persons  who  might 
inform  these  poor  dupes  of  their  rights  under  the  law,  and  have 


S14 


escorted  them  to  the  coal  dumps,  co-operating  with  the  coal 
company  guards  in  keeping  them  there  whether  they  wished  to 
leave  or  not. 

CONDUCT  OF  LIEUTENANT  LINDERFELT. 

On  December  31  we  called  your  attention  to  the  following 
telegram  from  Trinidad,  to  a  specific  instance  of  Lieutenant 
Linderfelt’s  cruelty  which  had  come  under  our  immediate 
notice: 

“We  did  not  expect  to  report  to  you  until  we  had  completed 
the  taking  of  testimony  at  all  camps,  but  in  our  judgment  the 
following  serious  matters  should  be  reported  to  you  at  once: 
Lieut.  E.  K.  Linderfelt,  of  the  cavalry  stationed  at  Berwind, 
last  night  at  Ludlow  brutally  assaulted  an  inoffensive  boy  in 
the  public  railroad  station,  using  the  vilest  language  at  the 
same  time.  He  also  assaulted  and  tried  to  provoke  to  violence 
Louis  Tikas,  head  man  of  the  Ludlow  strikers’  colony,  and 
arrested  him  unjustifiably.  Today  in  the  presence  of  one  of 
our  number  he  grossly  abused  a  young  man  in  no  way  con¬ 
nected  with  the  strike,  saying,  among  other  things,  ‘I  am  Jesus 
Christ,  and  my  men  on  horses  are  Jesus  Christs,  and  we  must 
be  obeyed;’  also  making,  threats  against  the  strikers  in  foulest 
language.  He  rages  violently  upon  little  or  no  provocation,  and 
is  wholly  an  unfit  man  to  bear  arms  and  command  men,  as  he 
has  no  control  over  himself.  We  have  reason  to  believe  that  it 
is  his  deliberate  purpose  to  provoke  the  strikers  to  bloodshed. 
In  the  interest  of  peace  and  justice,  we  ask  immediate  action 
in  his  case.”  Signed  by  all  the  committee. 

Insults  to  Women. 

To  the  foregoing  instances  of  the  militiamen’s  cruelties  to 
men  (which  are  a  part  only  of  what  the  testimony  shows),  must 
be  added  their  insults  and  indignities  to  women — a  few  only  of 
which  have  been  mentioned.  A  young  Slavic  widow  of  nine¬ 
teen,  soon  to  become  a  mother,  is  dragged  through  an  alley  at 
night — a  militiamen’s  hand  over  her  mouth  to  smother  her 
screams — till  at  length  she  faints  and  falls  unconscious.  Eight 
or  ten  men  seized  her  and  a  women  with  her  as  they,  were  get¬ 
ting  coal  in  the  alley,  and  they  were  thus  seized  and  dragged 
because  these  militiamen  heard  a  shot  in  the  neighborhood. 
Since  it  is  a  pastime  of  the  militia  to  shoot  their  guns  as  play¬ 
things  and  discharge  them  indiscriminately,  this  incident  would 
be  ludicrous  were  it  not  so  pathetically  tragic.  Unprotected 
women  have  been  roused  from  sleep  by  militiamen  attempting 
to  enter  their  homes  at  night.  Young  girls  have  been  grossly 
insulted  by  militiamen  on  the  public  street,  and  their  protesting 
father  laughed  at.  A  modest  young  wife  has  her  baby  taken 
from  her  while  she  is  threatened  with  grossest  abuse  by  the 
militiamen.  Restaurant  waitresses  are  so  insulted  by  militia¬ 
men  that  they  will  not  wait  upon  them.  The  arrest  of  Mrs. 
Germer  by  Major  Townsend  personally  furnishes  a  striking  il¬ 
lustration  of  the  despicable  methods  employed  to  humiliate  and 
intimidate  respectable  women. 

The  Ludlow  Tragedy. 

All  protestations  made  to  democratic  governor  Elias  M.  Am¬ 
mons  were  in  vain.  A  scathing  report  submitted  by  the  Policy 
Committee  of  the  special  convention  of  the  State  Federation  of 
Labor  also  remains  unheeded. 

The  situation  in  Colorado  finally  culminated  in  “the  Lud- 
law  Tragedy”  which  will  forever  remain  one  of  the  blackest 
spots  on  the  record  of  capitalism  and  of  the  Democratic  party. 
The  details  of  this  tragedy  are  so  horrifying  and  unbelievable 


that  we  have  purposely  quoted  only  non-socialist  authorities  in 
corroboration  of  the  facts. 

(From  The  Literary  Digest,  May  16,  1914.) 

A  clear  story  of  the  Ludlow  doings  has  been  written  for  the 
New  York  World  by  Mrs.  Helen  Ring  Robinson,  Colorado’s 
woman  State  Senator.  She  tells  it  “after  a  careful  study  of  the 
battle-field  and  the  surrounding  heights  and  arroyos,”  and 
“after  sifting  the  recitals  of  representatives,  both  of  turbulent 
capital  and  turbulent  labor.”  She  notes  that  the  mine  officials 
and  their  partisans  refer  to  the  strikers  as  the  “ignorant  off¬ 
scourings  of  Europe  and  Asia,”  but  she  says  they  “evade  the 
fact  that  these  same  ‘yaps’  were  originally  brought  to  Colorado 
by  the  mine  owners  as  strike-breakers,  to  displace  Americans, 
Welshmen  and  Scotchmen.”  On  one  side  of  the  conflict,  ac¬ 
cording  to  Mrs.  Robinson,  were  the  embittered  strikers,  ' and 
on  the  other  “three  or  four  militia  officers,  several  other  men 
who  had  a  right  to  wear  the  uniform  of  the  Colorado  militia, 
and  a  mob  of  gunmen,  mine  guards,  plug-uglies,  penitentiary 
sweepings.”  As  Mrs.  Robinston’s  story  goes,  taunts  were  ex¬ 
changed  between  some  strikers  and  militiamen  the  day  before 
the  Ludlow  fight.  A  guard  said  something  about  “our  big  roast 
tomorrow.”  On  that  morrow  Louis  Tikas,  a  leader  among  the 
strikers,  was  sent  by  the  militia  commander  at  Ludlow. 

While  Tikas  was  in  conference  with  Major  Hancock,  men 
in  uniform  were  seen  on  Cedar  Hill  pointing  a  machine  gun  at 
the  strikers’  tents. 

Those  strikers  had  for  days  been  hearing  reports  that  they 
were  to  be  ‘cleaned  out.’  ...  It  had  been  agreed  that  no  shot 
should  ever  be  fired  from  the  tents,  defenseless  on  the  low- 
lying  prairies.  The  men  were  to  draw  the  soldiers  away  from 
the  tents,  leaving  them  as  sanctuaries  for  the  women  and  chil¬ 
dren. 

“As  the  strikers  were  rushing  to  the  arroyo,  three  signal 
bombs  were  exploded  in  the  militia  camp.  What  they  signified 
no  one  may  ever  know.  .  .  .  Tikas  [later  killed  in  the  militia 
camp]  broke  from  the  station,  waving  his  arms  for  the  men  to 
return.  At  that  moment  the  firing  began. 

“Quite  possibly  it  came  first  from  the  strikers  in  the  arroyo. 
Then  the  machine  gun  began  to  rake  the  tents  and  arroyo. 
Bullets  ripped  through  the  tent  walls.  Men  and  women  dodged 
and  crawled  from  the  colony,  seeking  safety  in  the  Black  Hills. 
Fifty  women  took  shelter  in  the  big  railroad  pump-house,  with 
the  levels  below  the  earth.  Other  women  and  children  sought 
the  pits  beneath  the  tents  dug  for  such  an  emergency.  At 
least  eleven  women  and  children  found  in  those  pits  their  graves. 

“A  fire  from  the  strikers  in  the  arroyo  answered  the  fire  of 
gunmen.  There  would  be  occasional  lulls  on  both  sides.  Then 
the  splutter  of  the  machine  gun  would  begin  again.  .  . 

“At  about  5:30  there  was  another  lull  in  the  firing.  Major 
Hamrock,  standing  near  the  machine  gun  on  Cedar  Hills, 
opened  his  watch,  closed  it  with  a  snap,  and  said  to  Captain 
Carson,  standing  beside  him: 

“  ‘We’ve  got  just  forty  minutes  to  burn  those  tents  out.’ 

“At  six  o’clock  the  tents  flamed,  while  instantaneously  from 
four  different  points  the  gunmen’s  fire  was  directed  against  the 
colony.” 

Later,  a  coroner’s  jury  sitting  in  Trinidad  brought  in  a  ver¬ 
dict  that  the  women  and  children  who  perished  at  Ludlow 
“came  to  their  deaths  by  asphyxiation  or  fire  or  both  caused  by 
the  burning  of  the  tents  of  the  Ludlow  tent  colony,  and  the 
fire  on  the  tents  was  started  by  militiamen  under  Major  Ham- 
rock  and  Lieutenant  Linderfelt  or  mine  guards  or  both  on  the 
twentieth  day  of  April,  1914.”  The  Women’s  Peace  League 


216 


“  \ 


Committee  has  made  investigations  and  charges  these  officers 
and  their  men  with  responsibility  for  the  Ludlow  battle. 

(From  The  Literary  Digest,  May  9,  1914.) 

A  physician  for  the  miners’  union  and  another  witness  testi¬ 
fied  that  militiamen  fired  directly  at  a  ranch-house  in  which 
women  were  sheltered.  The  doctor  said  that  the  fire  began  in 
the  evening,  died  out,  and  “was  renewed  an  hour  and  a  half  or 
two  hours  later  by  fire  which  seemed  to  break  out  in  many 
places  at  once.  The  flames  could  not  have  leapt  from  tent  to 
tent  in  the  creation  of  this  blaze;  the  distances  between  were 
too  great.”  The  next  morning,  when  a  few  of  the  tents  were 
left  standing,  the  two  .witnesses  “saw  troops  enter  the  colony 
with  oil,  and  after  saturating  the  tents  which  remained  upright, 
ignite  them.”  The  Denver  Rocky  Mountain  News  prints  half  a 
dozen  affidavits  of  men  who  saw  the  militia  train  their  rifles 
and  machine  guns  on  the  tents  at  Ludlow,  and  shoot  at  “any¬ 
thing  they  saw  move,  even  a  dog.”  According  to  these  ac¬ 
counts,  “not  a  shot  was  fired  by  any  one  from  the  tent  colony, 
or  near  the  tents;”  “the  few  men  who  had  guns  went  away  to 
other  places,  and  there  was  no  excuse  to  shoot  into  the  tents.” 
These  accounts  are  credited  by  the  editors  of  such  Colorado 
dailies  as  the  Denver  Express,  Times,  Rocky  Mountain  News, 
and  Colorado  Springs  Gazette. 

(From  The  Literary  Digest,  May  9,  1914.) 

On  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  Congressman 
Keating,  of  Colorado,  declared  one  day  last  week  that  the  domi¬ 
nation  of  the  Rockefellers  in  the  strike  district  had  “made  it 
practically  impossible  to  enforce  laws  and  protect  human  life.” 
He  called  the  attention  of  Congress  to  the  fact  that  the  very 
grand  jury  which  last  fall  indicted  leaders  of  the  miners’  union 
for  violation  of  the  Sherman  Law  reported  that  State  laws  have 
not  been  properly  enforced;  that  coal  companies  have  controlled 
county  officers;  that  many  camp-marshals  have  exercised  arbi¬ 
trary  powers  and  have  “brutally  assaulted  miners,”  who  “can 
not  complain  of  real  grievances  without  being  discharged.” 
Also,  that  “the  scrip  system  is  still  in  effect,  and  miners  feel  un¬ 
der  an  unjust  obligation  to  trade  at  the  company’s  stores  be¬ 
cause  of  the  attitude  of  mine  superintendents  in  denying  the 
miners  check  weighmen  to  see  that  the  miners  got  full  credit 
for  the  coal  sent  out  of  the  shafts.” 

Judge  Ben  Lindsey  of  Denver,  Colorado,  in  an  interview 
given  in  Chicago  on  May  19th  to  a  representative  of  the  United 
Press  is  quoted  as  follows: 

“The  true  story  of  what  took  place  is  too  horrible  to  print. 
We  can  only  suggest  it  and  fill  in  the  outlines  with  the  direct 
testimony  of  these  women  who  suffered.  As  one  instance  of 
what  took  place,  a  father  went  to  the  militia  camp  for  his  little 
boy,  who  was  missing.  He  was  saluted  with  the  child’s  corpse. 
The  head  had  been  shot  off  and  the  body  half  burned.  A  sol¬ 
dier  threw  it  to  him  over  the  tent,  and  said:  ‘Here,  take  the 
— —  thing.’ 

“Mothers  who  went  to  the  rescue  of  their  babes  were  shot 
down  and  brutally  mutilated.  Children  only  a  few  years  old 
were  killed. 

“The  handiwork  of  barbarism  in  the  most  unholy  days  of 
Goth  could  not  have  been  more  cruel  than  what  took  place 
at  Ludlow.” 

National  Committee  of  the  Socialist  Party  Passes  Ringing 

Resolutions  in  Condemnation  of  John  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr., 
and  the  Colorado  Authorities. 

Resolutions  Committee  submitted  the  following  revised  reso¬ 
lution  on  Colorado,  which  was  adopted  as  read:  “The  National 
Committee  of  the  Socialist  party,  in  session  at  Chicago,  repre- 


217 


senting  one  million  Socialist  voters,  in  common  with  millions  of 
other  citizens,  view  with  horror  the  recent  murder  of  miners, 
their  wives  and  children  in  Colorado,  as  well  as  other  outrages 
committed  by  hired  assassins  of  the  mine  owners,  thrown  into 
ghastly  relief  by  the  funeral  pyre  at  Ludlow. 

The  Colorado  Fuel  and  Iron  Company,  together  with  the 
associated  mining  companies,  have  established  an  industrial 
feudalism  of  tremendous  proportions.  Possessing  the  land  and 
all  manner  of  property,  the  mining  companies  have  added  to 
these  control  of  the  governor,  legislators,  courts,  mayors,  sher¬ 
iffs  and  other  public  officials,  who  are  frequently  superintend¬ 
ents  and  managers  of  the  mining  corporations.  Under  this 
economic  and  political  regime  the  sway  of  the  mine  owners  has 
become  complete,  civil  law  has  been  suspended,  citizens  wan¬ 
tonly  murdered  and  a  state  of  capitalist  anarchy  established. 

“Glaring  instances  of  the  arrogance  of  the  ruling  class  and 
their  servants  was  manifested  in  the  declaration  of  John  D. 
Rockefeller,  Jr.,  that  he  is  willing  to  sacrifice  his  fortune  in 
continuance  of  the  outrageous  policy  adopted  by  his  agents; 
in  the  action  of  General  Chase  having  his  troops  ride  down, 
wound  and  kill  defenseless  women  and  children,  after  illegally 
investing  with  military  power  imported  thugs,  hired  as  mine 
guards,  and  in  the  action  of  Governor  Ammons  in  abetting  the 
reign  of  terror  perpetrated  upon  the  miners  and  their  'families. 

“In  this  connection  it  is  well  to  know  that  the  miners  went 
on  strike  in  order  to  secure  enforcement  of  the  labor  legisla¬ 
tion  already  on  the  statute  books,  providing  for  the  right  of 
working  men  to  join  labor  unions,  establishing  the  eight-hour 
work  day,  semi-monthly  pay-day  and  check  weighmen,  and  of¬ 
fering  the  opportunity  to  the  miners  of  trading  with  independent 
stores. 

“It  is  also  well  to  remember  that  at  the  very  time  the  federal 
government  was  demanding  a  salute  to  the  flag  from  the  usurp¬ 
ing  president  of  Mexico,  the  hired  mercenaries  of  the  mine 
owners  in  Colorado  were  firing  a  fusilade  of  bullets  into  the 
tents  at  Ludlow,  above  which  waved  the  American  flag.  Added 
to  this  was  the  shameful  spectacle  of  the  president  of  our  re¬ 
public,  who  refused  to  recognize  Huerta  on  the  ground  that  his 
claim  was  stained  with  human  blood,  sending  a  special  ambas¬ 
sador  to  confer  with  John  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr.,  and  being  refused 
recognition  by  him.  No  further  evidence  is  required  to  show  in 
whose  hands  rests  the  real  control  of  this  nation. 

1  “Considering  this  record  of  abuse  of  police  powers  by  the  gov¬ 
ernment  at  the  behest  of  the  plutocracy,  together  with  numerous 
similar  occurrences  in  other  parts  of  the  country;  considering 
the  treasonable  employment  by  them  of  private  detective  agen¬ 
cies  to  provoke  and  execute  disorder  and  crime;  considering 
the  fact  that  the  poverty  of  the  workers  is  pitted  against  the 
unlimited  resources  of  their  exploiters,  the  restraint  of  the 
workers  has  been  in  significant  contrast  with  the  alleged  law 
and  order  of  the  capitalist  class. 

“Representing  the  political  party  of  the  working  class,  we, 
the  National  Committee  of  the  Socialist  Party,  favor  having 
complete  amnesty  declared  for  the  strikers  in  Colorado,  who 
took  up  arms  in  self-defense,  and  pledge  them  our  fullest  sup¬ 
port  should  they  be  prosecuted  for  having  done  so. 

.  .  “We  also  pledge  our  co-operation  and  assistance  to  the 
miners  and  other  labor  organizations  in  any  move  to  make 
government  by  force  and  violence  a  crime  punishable  by  appro¬ 
priate  penalty. 

“And,  finally,  we  urge  upon  the  workers  the  necessity  of 
ibolishing  capitalist  ownership  of  the  mines  and  mining  industry 
)f  the  country,  and  the  substitution  therefor  of  public  owner¬ 
ship  and  control  for  the  common  benefit  of  the  working  class.” 


PART  V 


THE  EVIL  EFFECTS  OF  CAPITALISM 


1.  Concentration  of  Wealth  and  Power. 

(a)  WEALTH  OF  KINGS  IN  AMERICA  AND  ELSE¬ 
WHERE  COMPARED. 

(From  the  Arsenal  of  Facts,  Appeal  to  Reason.) 

The  Wall  Street  Journal  places  the  net  profits  of  the  Stand¬ 
ard  Oil  Company  for  the  past  twenty-five  years  and  six  months 
at  $929,000,000.  This  sum  is  so  stupendous  that  it  is  impossible 
for  the  average  mind  to  comprehend  just  what  it  represents, 
in  order  that  you  may  make  a  comparison  I  publish  below  a  list 
of  the  rulers  of  Europe  and  the  presidents  of  North  and  South 
America  with  the  amounts  paid  them  for  their  “service”  and 
multiply  the  total  by  25 the  number  of  years  covered  in  the 
report  of  the  net  earnings  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company: 


British  Royal  family . $  2,910,000 

Emperor  of  Austro-Hungary  .  3,875,000 

King  of  Bavaria  . 1,412,000 

King  of  Belgium  .  660,000 

King  of  Denmark . 227,775 

King  of  Greece  .  280,000 

King  of  Netherlands  .  250,000 

King  of  Italy  .  2,858,000 

King  of  Norway  and  Sweden .  575,525 

King  of  Portugal  .  634,440 

King  of  Prussia  .  3,852,770 

King  of  Roumania  .  237,000 

Czar  of  Russia  .  12,000,000 

King  of  Saxony  .  735,000 

King  of  Servia .  240,000 

King  of  Spain  . 2,000,000 

King  of  Wurtemberg  .  449,050 

President  of  France .  250,000 

President  of  United  States .  75,000 

President  of  Mexico  .  50,000 

Governor  General  of  Canada .  50,000 

South  American  Republics  . ., .  200,000 


Total  per  year  . $  33,821,560 

Total  for  25 Yi  years .  862,449,780 

Rockefeller  “Interests”  income  for  25^4  years......  929,000,000 

2.  Poverty. 


(a)  EXTENT  OF  POVERTY  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

(From  Poverty,  by  Robert  Hunter.  Pub.  by  The  Macmillan 

Company.) 

After  studying  with  great  care  all  the  statistics  and  sources 
of  information  known  to  me  upon  the  subject,  I  have  come  to 
the  conclusion,  as  stated  in  my  book  on  “Poverty,”  there  are  no 
fewer  than  10,000,000  persons  in  actual  poverty  in  the  United 
States.  This  does  not  mean  that  there  is  this  number  in  dis¬ 
tress;  it  does  mean  that  at  least  this  number  is  much  of  the  time 
underfed,  poorly  clothed  and  improperly  housed.  The  esti¬ 
mate  is  conservative,  and  an  inquiry  properly  conducted  would 
very  likely  show  a  much  larger  number  of  persons  in  poverty. 

I  base  this  statement  upon  my  own  observation  in  various 
cities  in  this  country,  upon  the  figures  of  the  U.  S.  census  for 


219 

1900  concerning  unemployment,  upon  the  reports  of  the  State 
Boards  of  Charity,  the  Bulletin  of  Statistics  Department  of 
the  city  of  Boston  of  1903,  the  records  of  the  Municipal  Court 
of  New  York  concerning  the  number  of  evictions,  and  the 
report  of  the  Department  of  'Corrections,  concerning  the  num¬ 
ber  of  pauper  burials  in  New  York  City.  *  *  * 

.  These  additional  facts  are  important:  'Over  2,000,000  work¬ 
ingmen  in  the  year  1900  were  unemployed  from  four  to  six 
months  during  the  year;  about  500,000  male  immigrants  arrive 
yearly  and  seek  work  in  the  very  districts  where  unemploy¬ 
ment  is  greatest.  Nearly  half  of  the  families  in  the  country  are 
propertyless;  over  1,700,000  little  children  are  forced  to  become 
wage-earners  when  they  should  still  be  in  school;  about  5,000,- 
000  women  find  it  necessary  to  work,  and  about  2,000  000  are 
employed  in  mills,  factories,  etc.;  probably  not  fewer  than  1  000- 
000  workers  are  injured  or  killed  while  doing  their  work;’  and 
about.  10,000,000  of  the  persons  now  living  will,  if  the  present 
ratio  is  kept  up,  die  of  the  preventable  disease,  tuberculosis. 


Poverty  in  the  United  States. 

(Encyclopedia  Social  Reform — Bliss.  Published  by  Funk  & 
Wagnalls  Company.) 

The  number  of  paupers  in  alms  houses  in  the  U.  S.  in  1903, 
as  reported  by  the  census,  was  81,764.  But  this  is  only  one 
class  of  the  poor  in  any  country. 

Professor  Bushnell,  in  Professor  Henderson’s  “Modern 
Methods  of  Charity,”  says  that  “the  total  number  of  public 
and  private  abnormal  dependents  in  the  U.  S.  must  not  be 
far  from  3,000,000,  or  one-twenty-fifth  of  the  total  pop¬ 
ulation  of  the  country,  at  an  annual  expense  of  nearly  $200,- 
000,000  or  one-tenth  of  the  total  wage  income  of  all  the  manu¬ 
facturing  establishments  in  the  country.”  *  *  * 

This  number  of  3,000,000  receiving  reported  aid  is  the  same 
number  estimated  in  1890  by  Charles  D.  Kellogg,  then  secretary 
of  the  New  York  Charity  Organization  Society,  and  by  Prof.  R. 
T.  Ely  (North  American  Review,  April,  1891).  But  these  fig¬ 
ures  are  only  those  receiving  known  aid.  It  by  no  means 
includes  all  the  poor  according  to  Mr.  Booth’s  definition.  Using 
the  word  in  that  sense  Robert  T.  Hunter  estimates  the  total 
number  of  the  poor  in  the  U.  S.  at  10,000,000. 

(b)  THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY  IN  CHICAGO. 

(From  the  Chicago  Tribune,  January  28,  1914.) 

Is  society,  in  building  one  great  charitable  institution  after 
another,  in  constantly  extending  the  agencies  of  private  charity, 
attacking  the  great  problems  of  poverty  and  delinquency  in  the 
wrong  way? 

The  facts  are  hard  to  get.  Accuracy  is  almost  impossible 
because  the  work  of  various  public  and  private  agencies  largely 
overlaps.  But  even  in  an  incomplete  form  the  figures  for 
Chicago  are  sufficiently  startling. 

It  appears  in  the  first  place  that  an  army  of  more  than 
20,000  people  are  supported  all  the  year  round  at  the  public 
expense  in  various  charitable  and  penal  institutions.  One  out 
of  every  110  residents  of  Cook  county  is  a  permanent  public 
charge  in  an  asylum,  home,  or  penitentiary. 

To  the  state  institutions  alone  Chicago  sends  about  9,000 
people,  less  than  1,000  of  this  number  being  confined  in  the 
state  penitentiary  and  reformatory.  The  insane  and  feeble 
minded  from  Chicago  who  are  undergoing  treatment  in  state 
hospitals  number  more  than  7,000. 

In  the  institutions  supported  by  Cook  county  there  are  more 
than  5,000  people.  The  average  daily  population  of  the  county 


220 


infirmary  and  home  at  Oak  Forest  is  nearly  2,200.  Herded  to¬ 
gether  like  cattle  in  the  county  jail  is  a  constantly  changing 
mass  of  something  like  600  men  and  women.  In  the  juvenile 
detention  home  100  little  boys  and  girls  under  16  are  always 
waiting  the  attention  of  the  judge.  Over  at  the  county  hos¬ 
pital  the  average  daily  population  is  about  1,600. 

The  city  of  Chicago  itself  supports  institutions  which  at 
present  care  for  nearly  5,000  men  and  women.  Out  at  the  house 
of  correction  alone  there  are  about  1,900  men  and  boys  always 
on  hand.  And  during  the  present  winter  every  drop  in  tem¬ 
perature  brings  the  guests  at  the  free  municipal  lodging  houses 
up  to  2,500  a  night.  These  figures  do  not  include  the  hundreds 
of  unfortuntes  who  are  each  night  jammed  into  the  filthy  cell- 
houses  of  the  city  police  stations. 

But  the  record  of  public  institutions  does  not  begin  to  tell  the 
tale  of  destitution  or  of  the  number  of  people  in  Chicago  who 
depend  for  at  least  a  part  of  their  support  on  charity.  Here 
again  it  is  almost  impossible  to  get  exact  figures.  But  making 
allowance  for  possible  duplications  it  appears  that  during  1913 
the  county  agent,  the  United  Charities,  and  the  Associated 
Jewish  Charities  alone  answered  more  than  150,000  individual 
cases  of  appeal  for  aid. 

Adding  to  this  number  the  20,000  Cook  county  residents  in 
penal  and  charitable  institutions,  there  are  found  to  be  170,000 
people  who  are  not  self-supporting — one  out  of  every  thirteen 
citizens  of  Chicago  is  a  recipient  of  charity. 

The  county  agent  alone  gave  aid  in  1913  to  12,635  families, 
with  a  total  membership  of  more  than  50,000  individuals.  The 
county’s  bill  for  groceries  alone  during  the  year  was  more 
than  $100,000.  The  county  also  paid  pensions  to  the  amount 
of  $165,000  to  350  indigent  mothers  to  help  them  in  the  support 
of  1,125  children.  It  otherwise  cared  for  more  than  10,000 
dependent  and  delinquent  children  and  buried  at  public  expense 
nearly  1,000  friendless  and  pauper  dead. 

The  United  Charities  answered  calls  for  help  from  14,264 
families  in  the  city,  representing  approximately  60,000  people, 
and  that  after  being  as  careful  as  possible  to  see  that  they  were 
not  imposed  on  by  people  who  were  already  being  aided  by 
other  charitable  agencies. 

The  Associated  Jewish  Charities  took  care  of  2,304  cases 
during  the  year,  most  of  them  representing  in  each  instance  a 
whole  family  in  distress.  They  are  fairly  certain  that  none  of 
their  beneficiaries  received  help  from  the  United  Charities, 
though  a  few  may  have  had  supplies  from  the  county  agent. 

Besides  these  three  great  agencies  there  are  hundreds  of 
other  charitable  organizations  in  the  city,  which  do  in  the 
aggregate  an  enormous  amount  of  work.  The  bureau  to  which 
sixty-five  of  these  charitable  societies  report,  including  the 
United  Charities  but  neither  the  county  agent  nor  the  Jewish 
charities,  has  a  total  of  90,000  calls  for  aid  on  its  books  during 
the  last  year. 

A  statement  published  by  the  general  educational  committee 
on  Chicago  philanthropy  shows  a  total  expenditure  for  charity 
and  relief  in  Cook  county  of  nearly  $11,000,000,  and  this 
does  not  include  by  any  means  all  of  the  private  charitable 
organizations.  Students  of  the  subject  put  the  annual  figure  at 
no  less  than  $15,000;000.  Of  this  $4,250,000  comes  from  the 
public  funds;  the  rest  represents  private  contributions. 

The  number  of  dependents,  defectives,  and  delinquents  in 
Chicago— -to  use  the  technical  terms— is  increasing  rapidly, 
faster  in  proportion  than  the  population  of  the  city. 

Almost  overwhelmed  as  they  are  in  the  tremendous  effort 
to  relieve  distress,  the  leaders  in  the  movement  are  more  and 


221 


more  turning  to  the  study  of  the  underlying  causes  and  con¬ 
ditions  which  are  responsible  for  it. 

What,  they  ask,  can  the  united  effort  of  the  people  of  Chi¬ 
cago  do  to  reduce  the  number  of  these  causes  and  improve 
these  conditions? 


(c)  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY. 


Economic  Conditions,  Not  Intemperance,  Chief  Cause  of 
Poverty.— It  is  often  stated  that  intemperance  is  the  greatest 
and  chief  cause  of  poverty.  This  has  been  completely  disproven 
by  careful  sociological  investigation.  For  the  facts  upon  these 
points  see  PART  II,  Sec.  4,  sub-section  (e),  page  79. 

Causes  of  Poverty.— (As  compiled  by  Dr.  Edward  T.  Devine, 
secretary  of  the  New  York  Charity  Organization  Society.)— 
Five  thousand  families,  chosen  at  random  from  the  many 
thousands  which  have  sought  relief  from  the  society  (Charity 
Society  of  New  York)  during  the  last  few  years,  were  studied 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  disabilities  which  made  the  appli¬ 
cation  for  public  relief  necessary— in  other  words,  the  condi¬ 
tions  which  created  a  condition  of  poverty  too  serious  to  be 
endured  without  assistance.  Following  are  the  results  of  the 
study: 


Factors  that  appear  as  one 
cause  of  poverty. 

Unemployment  . 

Overcrowding  . 

Widowhood  . 

Physical  disability — 

Chronic  . 

Temporary  . .... 

Intemperance  . 

Laziness  . . 

Immorality  . 77.7.7.7. 

Mental  disease  or  deficiency  !] 

Criminal  record  . 

Violent  temper  . "777 

Gambling,  less  than  ...77’ 


Per  cent  of 
.the  whole  number 
studied  in  which 
this  factor  app’r’d 
.  .  .  .  69 

....  45 

....  SO 


27 

20 

16 

12 

5 

4.9 

3 

2 

1.5 


(These  percentages  added  together  are  more  than  100,  of 
course  because  several  causes  may  have  operated  in  any  one 
case.  For  example,  unemployment  and  widowhood  may  both 
have  contributed  toward  the  poverty  of  a  beneficiary.) 

Causes  of  Poverty.— The  New  York  Association  for  Im¬ 
proving  the  Condition  of  the  Poor  made  this  statement  regard¬ 
ing  the  causes  of  the  poverty  of  those  who  sought  relief  dur¬ 
ing  the  summer  of  1911: 


The  two  most  striking  points  were  the  large  number  of 
families  reduced  to  poverty  by  sickness,  and  the  insignificant 
part  played  by  intemperance  as  a  contributing  cause.  Of  the 
1,573  cases  in  the  association’s  care,  sickness  was  the  cause  of 
poverty  in  681  cases,  or  43  per  cent.  Intemperance  caused  a 
trifle  less  than  2  per  cent.  Unemployment  was  the  second  most 
important  cause,  with  25  per  cent.  Insufficient  income  led  12 
per  cent  to  seek  relief;  death  and  accident,  4  per  cent;  old  age, 
per  cent.  Other  contributing  causes  were  imprisonment,  fire, 
mental  deficiency,  immorality  and  insanity.” 

Quoted  by  John  Haynes  Holmes  in  “The  Revolutionary 
Function  of  the  Modern  Church.” 

Low  Wages  and  Poverty.— The  Massachusetts  Bureau  of 
statistics  showed  a  few  years  ago,  when  the  cost  of  living  was 
ess  than  now,  that  a  family  of  five  could  not  live  decently  and 
in  health  upon  less  than  $754  a  year,  but  more  than  half  of  the 
unskilled  workers  in  the  shoe-making  industry  of  that  State 
got  less  than  $300  a  year! 

Mr.  John  Mitchell  said  that  in  the  anthracite  district  of 
Pennsylvania  it  was  impossible  to  maintain  a  family  of  five  in 
ecency  on  less  than  $600  a  year,  but.  according  to  Dr.  Peter 


Roberts,  who  is  one  of  the  most  conservative  of  living  author¬ 
ities  upon  the  conditions  of  industry  in  the  coal  mines  of 
Pennsylvania,  the  average  wage  in  the  anthracite  district  is 
less  than  $500,  and  about  60  per  cent  receive  less  than  $450  a 
year. 

A  good  many  years  ago  General  Booth,  head  of  the  Salva¬ 
tion  Army,  declared  that  nine-tenths  of  the  poverty  of  the 
people  was  due  to  intemperance.  Later  on  “Commissioner” 
Cadman,  one  of  the  “General’s”  most  trusted  aides,  made  an 
investigation  of  the  causes  of  poverty  among  all  those  who 
passed  through  the  army  shelters  for  destitute  men  and  women. 
He  found  that,  among  the  very  lowest  class,  the  “submerged 
tenth,”  where  the  ravages  of  drink  are  most  sadly  evident, 
depression  in  trade  counted  for  much  more  than  drink  as  a 
cause  of  poverty.  The  figures  were: 


Depression  in  trade . 55.8  per  cent 

Drink  and  gambling . 26.6  per  cent 

Ill  health  . 11.6  per  cent 

Old  age  .  5.8  per  cent 

3.  Housing. 

(a)  TENURE  OF  HOMES  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

(From  “Suppressed  Information,”  published  by  Appeal  to 
Reason.) 

Mort- 

1903_  R®nt:ed’  Pre®»  grac’d. 

For  the  United  States  (U.  S.  Labor  Report, 

18th  Vol.,  pp.  54-55),  working  class  fami¬ 
lies  . . 

1900— 

For  the  United  States  (Census  Report,  Vol.  II, 
p.  cxcii),  all  families  .  53.5 

1890— 

For  the  United  States  (Census  Report,  Vol.  II, 

p.  cxcii),  all  families  .  52.2 

America  is  very  rapidly  becoming  a  nation  of  tenants.  A  glance 
at  the  above  summary  discloses  this  fact — a  fact  which  our  friends 
of  the  capitalist  parties  would  hide  from  their  constituency.  Mr. 
Roosevelt  of  late  has  had  much  to  say  about  “race  suicide” — but  I 
have  seen  nothing  from  his  pen  which  would  indicate  that  he  was 
aware  of  the  startling  tendency  toward  “home  suclde.”  *  *  • 

Take  New  York  City,  for  instance.  New  York,  it  might  be  men¬ 
tioned  in  passing,  is  the  wealthiest  city  in  the  Union.  Its  banks 
stand  on  a  par  with  the  financial  houses  of  Europe,  and  it  is  whis¬ 
pered  that  the  seat  of  the  financial  power  is  soon  to  be,  if  not 
already,  located  on  Manhattan  Island. 


per  ct. 

per  ct. 

per  ct. 

81.1 

10.6 

S.S 

53.5 

31.8 

14.7 

52.2 

34.4 

13.4 

In  the  value  of  its  manufactures  it  stands  at  the  head  of  the  list. 

Its  per  capita  wealth  production  is  exceeded  by  but  three  other 
American  cities. 

It  leads  in  the  number  of  millionaires  within  its  borders — in 
point  of  fact,  New  York  typifies  American  financial  and  in¬ 
dustrial  progress,  and  yet  what  do  the  census  reports  show? 

Read  in  the  history  of  New  York  City  the  history  of  every  other 
city — and  know  to  a  certainty  that  the  homeless  condition  of  its 
inhabitants  is  the  condition  in  which  the  people  of  every  other 
city  will  find  themselves  at  no  distant  day. 

In  New  York  City  there  are,  reported  by  the  census,  a  few  over 
400,000  “homes.”  Of  this  number  less  than  9,000  are  owned  free 
and  unincumbered;  less  than  14,000  families  have  even  a  mort¬ 
gaged  title  to  shelter  over  their  heads; — 

And  384,349  are  rented! 

Ponder  over  the  spectacle.  '  Of  the  four  millions  of  people  in 
New  York  City,  surrounded  on  every  hand  by  wealth  outrivaling 
as  does  the  sun  the  stars  the  dazzling  splendor  of  Rome  in  her 
most  palmy  days  of  robbery  and  rapine — a  few  over  two  per 
cent  can  say  they  have  a  home  exempt  from  the  toll  of  the  land¬ 
lord  and  the  money  shark! 

New  York  City  is  but  a  type,  a  little  more  Intensified,  of  other 
American  cities. 

The  census  statistician  has  painstakingly  gathered  his  informa¬ 
tion,  and  it  should  damn  any  politician  who  claims  responsibility 
for  the  prosperous  times  of  the  past  twenty-five  years.  *  •  • 

I  have  quoted  thus  at  length  from  the  report  in  order  to  get 
the  thought  firmly  fixed  in  the  mind  of  the  reader  that  we  are  dis 
cussing  figures  indicating  the  high-water  mark  of  capitalistic 
prosperity.  Naturally,  during  the  prosperous  times  men  buy 
homes,  and  it  is  not  assuming  too  much  to  say  that  every  family 


228 

VoiriI-  teH  US?  SayS  the  government  statistician,  page  cxcili, 

♦\-Ca^eful  stufy  of  the  census  figures  will  show  that  the  older 
of  hired  or  rented  or  encumbered  homes.  ' 

richer  and  more  advanced  the  community,  the  larger  the  per  cent 
From  this  summary  it  appears  that  of  the  16,187,715  homes  on 
‘he  “ainlana  of  the  United  States  In  1900.  7,259,362  are  returned  aS 
£^n®d.  th?.fP™lie®  1Ivlng-  ^  them,  8,365,739  as  hired,  leaving 
562,614  for  which  the  facts  of  proprietorship  were  not  stated  Dis¬ 
regarding  the  unknown  element  and  considering  the  percentages 
based  upon  known  proprietorship,  it  appears  that  46.4  per  cent  of 
all  the  homes  in  1900  are  owned  and  53.5  per  cent  are  hired  The 
owned  free  constitute  31.8  per  cent.  *  *  *  These  percentages 1 
compared  with  similar  percentages  for  1890,  show  a  slightly’ in¬ 
creased  proportion  of  both  hired  and  encumbered  homes  and  a 
corresponding  decreased  proportion  of  homes  owned  free  *  *  *  a 
comparison  of  the  percentages  for  farm  homes  show  conditions 
similar  to  those  already  stated  for  all  homes.  (United  States  Cen 
sus  Report,  page  cxcii,  Vol.  II.)  s  cen 

(b)  HOME  OWNERSHIP  BY  STATES. 


(Approximate  figures.) 

—Plate  No.  19,  Vol.  2. 

U.  S.  Census  Rept.,  1900. 

Alaska  . 

Owned 
free  per 
cent. 

Mort¬ 

gaged 

per 

cent. 

Rent¬ 
ed,  per 
cent. 

New  Mexico  . 

■  ■ 

20 

Oklahoma  . 

2 

30 

Idaho  . . . 

9 

1  A 

28 

Nevada  . 

10 

rr 

2  8 

Utah  . 

7 

3  2 

North  Dakota  . 

8 

O  9 

32 

Arizona  . 

20 

Montana  . 

5 

43 

South  Dakota  . 

7 

4  3 

Maine  . 

22 

29 

35 

Oregon  . 

16 

West  Virginia  . 

15 

40 

Washington  . 

10 

46 

Wyoming  . 

10 

45 

Kentucky  . 

8 

44 

49 

Florida  . 

9 

Virginia  . 

6 

52 

50 

Arkansas  . 

10 

Wisconsin  . 

7 

53 

Tennessee  . 

26 

34 

Minnesota  . 

6 

54 

36 

45 

New  Hampshire  . 

24 

Kansas  . 

1 5 

North  Carolina  . 

20 

41 

52 

Michigan  . 

8 

Texas  . 

25 

8  9 

55 

Indiana  . 

9 

Iowa  . 

20 

44 

Ohio  . 

25 

40 

Colorado  . 

18 

47 

Nebraska  . 

13 

52 

Vermont  . 

22 

23 

California  . 

25 

40 

Indian  Territory . 

13 

52 

Missouri  . 

2 

65 

Illinois  . 

19 

49 

Alabama  . 

17 

55 

Maryland  . 

7 

65 

Pennsylvania  . 

13 

60 

Louisiana  . 

15 

59 

Mississippi  . 

5 

10 

70 

65 

70 

South  Carolina  . 

5 

Delaware  . 

Hawaii  .  . 

6 

14 

70 

64 

Connecticut  . . . 

Massachusetts  . 

New  York  .  . 

2 

20 

16 

15 

15 

80 

60 

65 

Rhode  Island  . 

New  Jersey  . 

67 

70 

District  of  Columbia  . . 

20 

65 

HOME  OWNERSHIP  IN  THE  PRINCIPAL  CITIES 
OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


City. 


Free. 


Akron,  Ohio  .  9Q19 

Albany.  N.  Y  . 

Allegheny,  Pa.  ii*. ’.'.i  i*.!  i;*.;; ; . 

Altoona,  Pa .  . 

AtIanta-  Ga . : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :  ll\l 

"(Continued)  *  453 


gaged.  Rented. 


Atlanta'  City,  ’n!  '  j.‘ 


Mort- 

2001 

4288 

1626 

15141 

2324 

18983 

1172 

4949 

1374 

4739 

977 

15841 

606 

3662 

224 


(c)  HOME  OWNERSHIP  IN  THE  PRINCIPAL  CITIES 
OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


City. 

Auburn,  N.  Y . 

Augusta,  Ga . 

Baltimore,  Md . 

Bay  City,  Mich . 

Bayonne,  N.  J . 

Binghamton,  N.  Y . 

Birmingham,  Ala . 

Boston,  Mass . 

Bridgeport,  Conn . 

Brockton,  Mass . 

Buffalo,  N.  Y . 

Butte,  Mont . . 

Cambridge,  Mass . 

Camden,  N.  J  . 

Canton,  Ohio  . % . 

Cedar  Rapids,  Iowa  . . . 

Charleston,  S.  C . 

Chattanooga,  Tenn . 

Chelsea,  Mass . 

Chester,  Pa . 

Chicago,  Ill . 

Cincinnati,  Ohio  . 

Cleveland,  Ohio  . 

Columbus.  Ohio  . . . . 

Council  Bluffs,  la . 

Covington,  Ky . 

Dallas,  Texas  . . . 

Davenport,  Iowa  . 

Dayton,  Ohio  . 

Denver,  Colo . . . ; . 

Des  Moines,  Iowa  . 

Detroit,  Mich . . t . 

Dubuque,  Iowa  . 

Duluth,  Minn . . 

Easton,  Pa . 

East  St.  Louis,  Ill . 

Elizabeth,  N.  J . 

Elmira,  N.  Y.  .  .  . . 

Erie,  Pa . . . 

Evansville,  Ind . 

Fall  River,  Mass . 

Fitchburg,  Mass . 

Fort  Wayne,  Ind . . 

Fort  Worth.  Tex . 

Galveston,  Tex . 

Gloucester,  Mass . . . . 

Grand  Rapids,  Mich.  . 

Harrisburg,  Pa . 

Hartford,  Conn . 

Haverhill,  Mass  . 

Hoboken,  N.  J . . . 

Holyoke,  Mass . 

Honolulu,  Hawaii  . 

Houston,  Tex . 

Indianapolis,  Ind . 

Jackson,  Mich . . 

Jacksonville,  Fla . 

Jersey  City,  N.  J . 

Johnstown,  Pa . 

Joliet,  Ill . 

Joplin,  Mo . . 

Kansas  City,  Kans . 

Kansas  City,  Mo . 

Knoxville,  Tenn . 

La  Crosse,  Wis . 

Lancaster,  Pa . . 

Lawrence,  Mass.  . . 

Lexington,  Ky . 

Lincoln.  Nebr . . 

Little  Rock,  Ark . . 

Los  Angeles,  Calif . 

Louisville,  Ky . 

Lowell,  Mass.  . . . . 

Lynn,  Mass . 

McKeesport,  Pa.  . 

Malden,  Mass . 

Manchester,  N.  H . 

Memphis,  Tenn . 

Milwaukee,  Wis.  . 

Minneapolis,  Minn . 

Mobile,  Ala . 

Montgomery,  Ala-  . 

Nashville,  Tenn . 

Newark,  N.  J . 

New  Bedford,  Mass . 

New  Britain,  Conn. 

Newcastle,  Pa. 


Free. 

gaged. 

Mort- 

Rented. 

1653 

1279 

3557 

1263 

170 

7397 

19286 

6960 

69761 

1586 

862 

2861 

665 

954 

4663 

1717 

1767 

5518 

794 

234 

6691 

9944 

10395 

•  89083 

1271 

2113 

11491 

924 

1985 

5968 

10965 

11844 

47298 

1150 

432 

3988 

2055 

1844 

14690 

1912 

2164 

12303 

1920 

1324 

3592 

1632 

1192 

2851 

1974 

279 

10639 

879 

266 

5345 

856 

907 

5463 

785 

996 

4979 

39246 

43735 

258582 

9725 

4915 

56384 

16240 

12246 

48844 

4445 

3204 

17822 

1304 

782 

3147 

1959 

923 

6235 

2233 

539 

5685 

2443 

1086 

4142 

3738 

3414 

11943 

5000 

3114 

21215 

2912 

2164 

8228 

12378 

9172 

35178 

2191 

819 

4154 

2057 

981 

5692 

1300 

664 

3664 

844 

578 

4097 

1461 

1819 

6855 

1961 

1231 

'4620 

2929 

1624 

6086 

2762 

876 

7849 

1473 

2098 

16711 

884 

1100 

4298 

2534 

2165 

5142 

1424 

500 

8290 

1867 

399 

4885 

1110 

848 

3320 

3742 

4184 

11534 

1506 

1313 

7474 

1109 

2296 

12604 

1380 

1399 

5723 

769 

451 

11750 

616 

1042 

6978 

1121 

226 

5111 

1907 

435 

5800 

6741 

5832 

25004 

1719 

1379 

2793 

1179 

406 

4931 

4569 

3729 

34060 

1818 

656 

4107 

1513 

958 

3106 

1945 

582 

2600 

2451 

1227 

7450 

4501 

3774 

26466 

1303 

320 

4579 

1811 

1035 

2961 

1554 

*  1448  > 

5552 

1428 

1536 

9281 

1320 

356 

4015 

1504 

782 

4749 

1540 

701 

5157 

5959 

3743 

12745 

8361 

2692 

31640 

2330 

1730 

13910 

1959 

2529 

10358 

948 

1071 

4657 

1219 

1620 

4217 

1686 

989 

8196 

2676 

607 

15851  i 

9541 

11278 

37466 

6287 

4903 

28522 

2198 

151 

6287 

1246 

447 

5213 

3320 

628 

12564  i 

4415 

6517 

41270 

2144 

1480 

9596 

288 

1218 

3797 

1396 

942 

3542 

(Continued) 


225 


(c)  HOME  OWNERSHIP  IN  THE  PRINCIPAL  CITIES 
OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Rented. 


City. 


New  Haven,  Conn .  2413 

New  Orleans,  La .  10634 

Newport,  Ky . . 

Newton,  Mass . 

New  York,  N.  Y . 

Manhattan  and  Bronx  Boroughs  . . 

Brooklyn  Borough  . ””  18611 

Queens  Borough  . 

Richmond  Borough  . 

Norfolk,  Va . 

Oakland,  Cal . 

Omaha,  Nebr . .  ‘  ’ 

Oshkosh,  Wis . **.*.* . 

Passaic,  N.  J . .  ’  ’  . 

Paterson,  N.  J . .  *  ’  ‘ . 

Pawtucket,  R.  I . 

Peoria,  Ill . . . 

Philadelphia,  Pa . . 

Pittsburgh,  Pa . 

Portland,  Me  . . . . . '  '  ’  . . 

Portland,  Ore . ’  ’ . 

Providence,  R.  I . . 

Pueblo,  Colo . 

Quincy,  Ill . '.  ’  ‘  *  ’  * *.  *. *  2060 

Racine,  Wis . . 

Reading,  Pa . 

Richmond,  Va . . 

Rochester,  N.  Y . .  ’  ’ .  fi’nni 

Rockford,  Ill . . !!!!!!!!!!  l’,663 

Sacramento,  Cal .  1  549 

Saginaw,  Mich . 3*404 

St.  Joseph  Mo . 3*062 

St.  LOUIS,  Mo .  1  0Q7 

St.  Paul,  Minn . i.”; .  5*556 

Salem,  Mass . *  1*341 

Salt  Lake  City,  Utah . !!!!!!  3*189 

San  Antonio,  Tex .  3  252 

San  Francisco,  Cal . 10*186 

Savannah,  Ga . 1*106 

Schenectady,  N.  Y . "  *  ’  -  •  - 

Scranton,  Pa . 

Seattle,  Wash . f. . .  .  2*780 

Sioux  Sity,  Iowa . j ’  1*376 

Somerville,  Mass . 1*760 

South  Bend,  Ind . 1*810 

South  Omaha,  Neb . ’962 

Spokane,  Wash . ’  1  789 

Springfield,  Ill . 

Springfield,  Mass . 1*842 

Springfield,  Ohio  . 1*879 

Superior,  Wis .  1*172 

Syracuse,  N.  Y . 4,*082 

racoma,  Wash .  1,622 

raunton,  Mass .  1*388 

rerre  Haute,  Ind . 1*918 

roledo,  Ohio  .  6*793 

rrenton,  N.  J .  1,*411 

fopeka,  Kan . 1*882 

froy,  N.  Y .  1*508 


Free. 

gaged. 

Mort- 

2413 

3598 

.  10634 

1698 

.  1461 

723 

1463 

1430 

35050 

48002 

8948 

13938 

18611 

25763 

4828 

6197 

2663 

2104 

1284 

326 

3846 

2124 

3127 

2113 

2035 

1509 

440 

791 

2016 

3088 

1015 

1154 

2545 

1713 

29033 

24013 

9014 

7178 

2529 

899 

3041 

1334 

4087 

3708 

1082 

593 

2060 

1141 

1,457 

1,554 

,  3,139 

2,825 

2,259 

748 

6,001 

6,289 

1,663 

1,239 

1,549 

695 

3,404 

1,271 

3,062 

1,352 

16,097 

9,699 

5,556 

2,851 

1,341 

864 

3,189 

1,202 

3,252 

470 

10,186 

5,139 

1,106 

316 

913 

1,139 

4,600 

2,583 

2,780 

903 

1,376 

1,760 

895 

2,240 

1,810 

1,603 

962 

642 

1,789 

811 

2,306 

1,223 

1,842 

2,607 

1,879 

1,162 

1,172 

337 

Jtica,  N.  Y. 


2,125 


5,115 

441 

960 

1,275 

4,990 

2,316 

1,172 

1,113 

2,163 


16722 

45129 

3872 

3499 

617474 

384349 

205154 

19681 

8290 

7922 

8362 

13941 

2134 

4014 

17285 

6060 

6916 

196124 

44364 

7358 

10004 

29696 

3693 

4734 

2,920 

10,191 

12,408 

20,481 

4,095 

3,672 

4,304 

11,080 

90,983 

20,266 

5,338 

6,700 

6,411 

49,666 

9,976 

4,281 

12,209 

8,171 

4,147 

9,745 

4,181 

2,443 

4,642 

3,674 

9,009 

5,354 

3,321 

15,439 

4,868 

4,017 

4,925 

15,851 

10,593 

4,454 

9,531 

7,193 


Washington,  D.  C. 
Vaterbury,  Conn. 
Wheeling,  W.  Va. 
Vilkesbarre,  Pa.  . 
iVilliamsport,  Pa. 
Vilmington,  Del. 
Voonsocket,  R.  I. 
Worcester,  Mass. 


8,441 

4,261 

40,753 

687 

1,367 

6,973 

2,128 

666 

5,438 

2,009 

1,404 

6,400 

1,403 

859 

3,958 

1,661 

2,209 

10,630 

487 

518 

4,290 

2,055 

3,807 

17,875 

Tonkers,  N.  Y.  . . 

rork,  Pa . 

roungstown,  Ohio 


729  1,193  6,692 

1,824  901  4,401 

2,524  1,280  4,750 


(d)  OVERCROWDING. 


(Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform — Bliss.) 

1  According  to  an  article  by  Mr.  Finley  in  the  Federation’s 
Julletin  (No.  4,  1906),  there  are  fifty-one  blocks  in  Manhattan 
nth  populations  of  over  3,000  inhabitants  each.  One  block  on 
he  west  side  has  a  population  of  6,173  and  a  density  of  1,145 
er  acre.  Several  smaller  blocks,  mainly  on  the  east  side,  with 
mailer  populations  have  still  higher  densities. 

In  no  other  cities  in  the  United  States  does  such  overcrowd- 


ing  to  an  investigation  made  of  certain  districts  of  Chicago, 
in  1905  (reported  in  Charities.  Jan.  6,  1906),  and  compared  with 
an  investigation  of  the  same  in  1900,  there  has  been  little  or  no 
improvement.  There  were  found  87  city  lots  wholly  built 
over,  144  more  lots  90-100  per  cent  built  over.  There  were 
730  rear  buildings  occupied  by  3,545  persons;  983  rooms  were 
“dark,  very  dark,  or  dark  and  gloomy”;  4,845  persons,  of  whom 
2,652  were  children,  lived  in  basements  or  cellars.  There  were 
161  bath  tubs  for  1,598  houses  and  21,612  people.  Garbage  was 
uncollected  or  dumped  in  the  yards.  p 

After  Chicago,  Boston,  Cincinnati  and  Jersey  City  have  the 
most  overcrowding;  though  in  proportion  to  their  size  Hobo¬ 
ken,  N.  J.,  and  Fall  River  and  Holyoke,  Mass.,  have  worse 
conditions.  *  *  * 

The  totals  for  the  160  cities  .of  continental  United  States 
having  at  least  25,000  inhabitant's  are  as  follows:  Total  popu¬ 
lation,  19,718,312;  total  dwellings,  2,884,621;  total  families, 
4,217,644;  private  families — number  4,137,279,  population  18,632,- 
457;  families  not  private,  80,365.  Average  number  of  persons 
to  a  dwelling,  6.8;  family,  4.7;  private  family,  4.5. 

Disease,  Vice  and  Crime. — “They  are  centers  of  disease,  pov¬ 
erty,  vice  and  crime.  All  the  conditions  which  surround  child¬ 
hood,  youth  and  womanhood  in  New  York’s  crowded  tenement 
quarters  make  for  unrighteousness.” 

A  friend  of  the  writer,  a  few  years  ago,  went  with  a  city  mis¬ 
sionary  on  a  midnight  tour  of  exploration,  which  he  thus 
describes:  “A  few  steps  out  of  Broadway  we  came  to  the  vilest 
dens  of  infamy.  In  one  room,  not  more  than  ten  by  twelve, 
we  came  upon  eighteen  human  beings,  men  and  women,  black 
and  white,  Americans  and  foreign-born,  who  there  ate,  slept  and 
lived.” — Dr.  Josiah  Strong  in  “The  Challenge  of  the  City,”  1907. 

“That  the  plague  (consumption)  spreads  with  congestion  has 
been  proved  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt.  It  spreads  even 
faster  than  the  crowd  pours  in.  So  it  is  in  the  block  we  have 
taken  (the  lung  block,  so  called  owing  to  the  ravages  of  con¬ 
sumption  in  it).  *  *  *  Between  1890  and  1900  the  density 

of  its  already  crowded  population  increased  no  less  than  65 
per  cent.  The  lung  block  alone  holds  nearly  4,000  people 
*  *  *  of  these  some  400  are  babies. 

It  is  a  block  of  a  thousand  homes.  Through  halls,  in  rooms, 
on  stairways,  in  courts,  in  shafts,  and  out  on  fire  escapes  are 
sprinkled  the  400  babies.  At  the  age  of  two  they  are  found 
alone  in  the  street,  already  imbibing  its  deep,  muddy  wisdom. 

In  a  block  so  congested,  the  plague  spreads  swiftly.  In  the 
past  nine  years  alone  this  block  has  reported  265  cases.  Doc¬ 
tors  and  others  declare  that  this  is  not  more  than  one-hall 
of  the  true  number.” — Ernest  Poole:  “A  Handbook  on  the 
Prevention  of  Tuberculosis”  (1903). 

Statistics  of  New  York. — (Fifth  Report  of  the  Tenement: 
House  Department  of  the  City  of  New  York:  1909,  page  102.) 

In  the  New  York  City  slums  there  are  364,367  dark  rooms 
and  of  these  101,207  had  no  windows  at  all  (p.  75).  ^ 

In  Brooklyn  there  are  59,447  totally  dark  rooms;  in  Man¬ 
hattan,  36,815;  in  The  Bronx,  1,281;  in  Queens,  3,415;  in  Rich¬ 
mond,  219  (p.  75). 

These  rooms  depend  for  light  and  ventilation  on  connecting 
outer  rooms  or  on  air-shafts.  The  so-called  air-shaft  i. 
really  a  well  of  stagnant  foul  air,  about  28  inches  wide,  50  o^ 
60  feet  long  and  extending  from  the  ground  to  the  top  of  th< 
building,  often  60  or  70  feet  or  more. 

The  tenement  house  population  in  New  York  is  3,624,431  per 


227 


(e)  HOUSING  AND  HEALTH. 

(From  “School  Feeding  ”  by  Louise  Stevens  Bryant, -pages  219- 

t  ioo270,-r?Ubr1Sh^d  >by  B-  LlPPinc°tt  Company.) 

In  1907  Dr.  Leslie  Mackenzie  and  Captain  Foster  of  Glas- 
gow,  investigated  72,800  cases  varying  from  five  to  fifteen 

years,  and  covering  all  of  the  children  in  the  public  schools  of 
tne  city. 

In  a  crowded  city  like  Glasgow,  the  size  of  the  house  is 
a  fair  index  of  the  degree  of  comfort  or  poverty  of  the  family. 
I  here  are  exceptions,  in  cases  of  especially  small  families,  but 
when  tens  of  thousands  of  cases  figure  in  the  data,  the  number 
of  rooms  is  a  trustworthy  index  of  the  economic  status.  The 
one-room  child  is  the  poverty  stricken  child,  and  hence  the 
underfed  child.  The  four-room  child  on  the  other  hand  belongs 
to  a  family  much  better  situated  economically.  The  truth  of 
these  principles  is  forcibly  illustrated  by  the  results  obtained 
m  the  investigation  under  consideration. 

When  the  average  height  and  weight  of  the  children  of  the 
different  groups  are  taken,  it  appears  that  the  child  from  the 
one-room  house  is  always  lighter  and  shorter  than  the  child 
from  the  two-room.  He  in  turn  is  shorter  and  does  not  weigh 
so  much  as  the  child  in  the  three-room  house— who  in  turn  is 
the  physical  inferior  of  the  child  living  in  a  house  of  four 
rooms  or  more.  These  results  are  shown  in  the  following  table: 

Average  Height  and  Weight  of  all  Children  from  5-18  years, 
according  to  Housing. 

Housing-  Average  weight  Average  height  la 

1  room  S: .  ln  poEu2n0ds- 

*  . :::::::::::::  «o.o  54o1 

4  rooms . - . .  64.9  51.5 


4.  Political  Corruption. 

(a)  THE  INVISIBLE  GOVERNMENT  UNDER  SEARCH¬ 
LIGHT. 

(By  John  Callan  O’Laughlin,  in  the  American  Review  of 
Reviews,  September,  1913.) 

These  men  have  gone  into  States  and  Congressional  districts 
notably  in  the  case,  of  the  National  Association  of  Manufac¬ 
turers,  to  elect  candidates  in  sympathy  with  their  views  and  to 
defeat  men  opposed  to  them. 

Indeed,  the  ambition  of  some  men  seeming  to  control  the 
policy  of  the  National  Association  of  Manufacturers,  as  dis¬ 
closed  by  their  own  letters,  has  soared  to  the  point  of  influenc¬ 
ing  the  election  of  a  president  of  the  United  States  and  the 
appointment  of  a  member  of  his  cabinet.  Literally,  the  great 
interests  have  spent  money  like  water  and  found  it  profitable; 
and  in  order  to  escape  responsibility  for  their  acts  they  have 
burned  books,  sent  unsigned  instructions,  and  designated  their 
employes  by  numbers  instead  of  by  their  proper  names. 

It  is  illuminating  to  describe  the  methods  the  testimony 
shows  to  have  been  employed  by  Big  Business  to  secure  or 
defeat  legislation.  It  has  obtained  the  services  of  the  most 
skilful  men  it  can  get.  They  may  be  divided  roughly  into  three 
-  asses.  The  first  is  composed  of  able  lawyers,  prepared  by 
>egitimate  argument  to  present  the  side  they  are  retained  to 
advocate.  The  second  comprises  legislative  lawyers,  receiving 
enormous  salaries,  whose  business  it  is  to  haunt  the  capitol 
md  bring. to  bear  every  art  at  their  command  to  advance  legis- 
ation  desired  by  their  clients  or  to  obstruct  and  delay  legisla- 
ion  mimical  to  the  interest  of  those  clients.  This  involves  the 
ise  of  parliamentary  or  unparliamentary  tactics,  the  extension 


228 


of  social  courtesies  and  the  attempt  to  place  members  of  the 
Senate  and  House  and  officials  of  the  administration  under  per¬ 
sonal  obligation.  The  third  class  is  made  up  of  ex-Senator* 
and  ex-'Congressmen,  who  exercise  large  influence  with  those 
actually  in  the  Senate  and  House  by  reason  of  the  standing  they 
enjoy  through  the  confidence  of  the  people  of  their  respective 
states  and  districts;  by  reason  of  their  long  association  with 
members  of  the  two  houses;  and  by  reason  of  their  experience 
in  legislative  affairs. 

Besides  the  several  classes  of  men  I  have  described,  the 
evidence  shows  the  employment  of  another  class,  skilful  men 
who  performed  the  functions  of  detectives.  Martin  M.  Mulhall, 
long  a  confidential  agent  of  the  National  Association  of  Manu¬ 
facturers,  whose  letters  forced  the  investigators  to  delve  into 
the  operations  of  the  association,  belongs  to  this  class.  It  was 
his  duty,  as  he  swore  on  the  witness  stand  and  as  his  reports 
assert,  to  visit  various  states  and  districts,  purchasing  men  on 
the  other  side,  burrowing  into  the  defense  of  the  opposition  and 
undermining  it,  aiding  and  opposing  congressional  and  guber¬ 
natorial  candidates,  bribing  labor  representatives  and  advancing 
by  secret  and  infamous  methods  the  aims  of  the  association. 
His  sordid  evidence  would  be  of  little  weight  standing  by  itself; 
but  reinforced  by  letters  from  the  presidents  and  officers  of  the 
association  heartily  congratulating  him  upon  the  work  he  has 
done  and  commending  him  as  worthy  of  supreme  confidence, 
it  has  to  be  given  consideration.  But  more  important  are  the 
original  letters  he  has  produced  and  others  subpoenaed  from 
the  association  itself,  all  tending  to  prove  the  intense  interest 
of  the  association  in  legislation  and  in  labor  matters.  None  of 
these  letters,  and  this  is  significant,  has  the  association  repudi¬ 
ated.  It  stands  by  them,  asserting  that  they  show  nothing 
sinister,  but  only  a  legitimate  use  of  methods  available  to 
everyone. 

It  is  interesting  to  elaborate  a  little  further  on  the  tactics 
employed  by  Special  Privilege.  A  favorite  policy  has  been  tc 
impress  the  President  and  members  of  theT  Senate  and  House 
with  the  existence  of  a  determined  public  sentiment  for  oi 
against  a  measure,  when  in  fact  the  public  was  only  slightly,  or 
perhaps  not  at  all  interested.  For  example,  the  officials  namec 
have  been  flooded  with  letters  and  telegrams  emanating  fron 
the  same  source  but  signed  by  different  names.  To  create  s 
sentiment,  friendly  Senators  and  members  were  persuaded  tc 
deliver  speeches  written  by  the  lobbyists,  which  were  publishec 
at  the  government  printing  office  and  mailed  by  the  thousand: 
under  government  frank.  Pamphlets,  also  written  by  the  lobby¬ 
ists,  likewise  were  printed,  in  part  at  public  expense,  and  mailec 
without  charge.  Newspapers  were  induced  to  print  matte: 
favorable  to  the  interests  concerned.  Advertisements  were  pub 
lished,  to  which  there  could  be  no  objection  unless  misleading 
but  they  must  be  taken  into  account  because  they  constitutec 
an  item  of  campaign  expense. 

Sometimes  the  effrontery  of  the  lobbyists  went  to  the  pom 
of  inducing  voters,  whose  interest  they  said  would  be  injuriousi; 
or  advantageously  affected,  to  threaten  their  Representative 
with  defeat  if  they  failed  to  pursue  a  certain  course  of  action. 

The  expense  of  lobbying  operations  is  heavy.  During  th 
last  six  years,  it  is  alleged,  $1,500,000  passed  through  the  hand 
of  the  National  Council  of  Industrial  Defense,  an  unincorporate 
association  organized  largely  on  paper  and  dominated  it  woul 
appear,  by  agents  of  the  manufactuerrs  as  a  means  of  evadin 
the  national  statute  against  campaign  contributions  by  corpora 
tions.  This  sum  does  not  represent  all  that  was  disbursed;  fc 
a  system  was  devised  whereby  local  manufacturers  contribute 


229 


to  local  congressional  campaigns.  The  Sugar  Trust  is  said  to 

freVatyUSeDurge  £“  $7,50;000  in  *****  the 

treaty.  During  the  past  twenty  years,  men  identified  with  the 
the  rSU§K-r  n\terests  confessed  to  the  expenditure  of  $50  000’  and 
th-V °™hmed  expenditure  of  all  the  sugar  lobbies  in  connection 
with  the  present  tariff  revision  is  certainly  $500,000  The  funds 

Bribery  Without  Passage  of  Money. 

„„  ™iere  did  the  money  g°?  Who  got  it?  These  pertinent 
questions  are  in  a  way  of  being  answered.  One  member  of 
Congress  is  charged  with  having  received  money  for  his  serv- 
?♦?!  National  Association  of  Manufacturers.  It  has  been 
stated  that  for  years  there  has  been  no  actual  passage  of  money 
o  members  of  Congress.  To  a  large  extent  this  if  true  Bm 
there  are  many  ways  by  which  a  member  who  does  the  bidding 
of  an  interest  may  be  rewarded.  Help  in  this  campaign  fo? 

throimh  hi  61ther  •"  tHe  Wa^  °f  Cash  given  him  directly  or 
through  his  campaign  committee,  and  frequently  through  the 

dispatch  of  agents  to  his  state-as  Mulhall  went  to  Indiana! 
Ohio,  Maine  and  New  Jersey— has  proven  an  effective  way  of 
returning  favors.  It  is  clear  from  the  evidence  that  the  devil 
easily  may  be  beaten  around  the  stump  if  there  is  only  a  will. 

Big  Business  is  shown  to  have  no  politics.  It  has  been  as 
willing, to  bebauch  a  Republican  Representative  as  a  Demo- 

hTth!  Srrn1"  Republican  party,  however,  is  deeper 
in  the  mud  than  the  Democratic  party  is  in  the  mire.  Probably 
t  is  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Republican  party  was  so  long 

iour°ol  theamin0onreity!  repreSe"tativ«  Congress  was  worth 

(b)  THE  CAUSE  OF  CORRUPTION,  “BIG  BUSINESS.” 

(From  The  Struggle  for  Self-Government,”  by  Lincoln  Stef¬ 
fens.  Published  by  McClure,  Phillips  &  Company.) 

Mr.  Steffens  has  studied  corruption  probably  more  than  any 
other  man  in  the  United  States  and  can  not  be  charged  with 
being  prejudiced  to  the  Socialist  view.  He  says: 

unh^SrSS  Ihu-  corruPfion  of  politics'  in  Pittsburgh, 

Wbh  d  J  ?hlladeI'Phla>  'boomed  with  it  in  Chicago  and 
The  rT  W! ,  Xs  reformsi  a"d  in  New  York  business  financed 
the  return  of  Tammany  Hall.  Here  then  is  our  guide  out  of 
he  labyrinth  Not  the  political  ring,  but  big  business-that  is 
the  crux  of  the  situation.  Our  political  corruption  is  a  system, 
nX®”?! 'y  established  custom  of  the  country,  by  which  our 
political  leaders  are  hired  by  bribery,  by  the  license  to  loot  and 
by  quiet  moral  support  to  conduct  the  government  of  the  city 
state  and  nation,  not  for  the  common  good,  but  for  the  special 
interests  of  private  business.  Not  the  politicians,  then,  not  the 
bribetaker,  but  the  bribegiver,  the  man  we  are  so  proud  of,  our 
successful  business  man— he  is  the  source  and  sustenance  of  our 
bad  government.  The  captain  of  industry  is  the  man  to  catch. 

.  “The  typical  business  man  is  a  bad  citizen;  he  is  busy.  If  he 
is  a  big  business’  man  and  very  busy,  he  does  not  neglect,  he  is 
busy  with  politics— oh,  very  busy,  and  very  businesslike.  I  found 

uUyiug  }°°d[ers  m  St*  Louis’  or^nating  corruption  in 
Pittsburgh,  defending  grafters  in  Minneapolis,  sharing  with 
bosses  in  Philadelphia,  deploring  reforms  in  Chicago  and  beat- 
mg  good  judgment  with  corruption  funds  in  New  York.  [See 
Mr.  Steffens  ‘The  Shame  of  the  Cities.”]  He  is  a  self-righteous 


The  “Big  Business”  Man  Disapproves  of  Reform. 


Elsewhere  Mr.  Steffens  says:  “I  spent  one  whole  afternoon 
calling  on  the  presidents  of  banks,  great  business  men  and 
financiers  interested  in  public  utility  companies  in  Chicago. 
With  all  the  evidence  I  had  in  other  cities  that  these  men  are 
the  chief  sources  of  corruption,  I  was  unprepared  for  the  sen¬ 
sation  of  that  day.  Those  financial  leaders  of  Chicago  were 
mad.  All  but  one  of  them  became  so  enraged  as  they  talked 
that  they  could  not  behave  decently.  They  rose  up,  purple  in 
the  face,  and  cursed  reform.  They  said  it  had  hurt  business; 
it  had  hurt  the  town.  ‘Anarchy/  they  called  it;  ‘Socialism/ 
They  named  corporations  that  had  left  the  city;  they  named 
others  that  had  planned  to  go  there  and  had  gone  elsewhere.” 

(c)  BIG  BUSINESS  AND  THE  BENCH. 

How  the  Courts  Have  Been  Invaded  and  Judges  Swayed  By 
the  Power  of  the  Corporations. 

(Extracts  from  an  article  under  that  title  in  Everybody’s,  Feb¬ 
ruary,  March,  April  and  May,  1912,  by  C.  P.  Connolly.) 
[Mr.  Connolly  is  a  lawyer  of  long  practice  and  wide  experi¬ 
ence,  and  for  years  has  specialized  in  subjects  that  required  high 
literary  and  legal  ability. — Editor’s  Note.] 

The  series  of  articles  beginning  below  is  the  result  of  two 
years’  constant  investigation — investigation  that  has  carried  me 
into  almost  every  state  in  the  union,  into  the  records  of  both 
state  and  federal  courts,  high  and  low.  What  I  have  unearthed 
is  an  astounding  tale  of  judicial  perversion  and  malpractice.  A 
state  of  affairs  exists  which,  unless  checked,  can  not  but  be  a 
serious  menace  to  the  country.  *  *  * 

When  the  highest  courts  of  certain  states  have  rendered 
their  final  decisions,  in  some  cases  unanimously,  powerful  polit¬ 
ical  leaders,  such  as  Foraker  in  Ohio  and  Quay  in  Pennsylvania, 
and  powerful  political  bosses,  such  as  Cox  in  Ohio,  Clardy  in 
Missouri,  Herrin  in  California,  Evans  and  the  Guggenheim  in¬ 
terests  in  Colorado,  have,  either  in  person  or  by  attorney,  made 
their  entrance  into  court;  and  thereupon  the  judges,  like  puppets 
at  the  end  of  a  string,  have  in  matters  of  vital  importance  turned 
complete  and  undignified  somersaults,  reversing  their  previous 
decisions. 

I  shall  show  that  courts  have  been  packed  in  order  to  render 
decisions  favorable  to  certain  corporations — not  once  but  so 
often  that  the  danger  has  become  too  great  to  ignore.  *  *  * 

I  shall  prove  that  judicial  opinions  of  our  highest  courts 
have  been  written  in  the  offices  of  legal  departments  of  rail¬ 
roads  and  other  corporations. 

I  shall  show  federal  judges  so  corrupt  that  long  since  their 
impeachment  should  have  been  called  for — if  that  were  not  an 
impotent  and  hopeless  remedy.  I  shall  show  them  using  the 
power  of  their  great  office  to  loot  prosperous  concerns,  to  the 
financial  advantage  of  judicial  rings.  *  *  * 

I  shall  prove  that  this  corruption  of  our  courts  is  not  con¬ 
fined  to  any  one  community,  that  it  pervades  every  section  o'f 
the  country  from  ocean  to  ocean,  and  that  the  puppets  of  cor¬ 
porations  sit  upon  the  bench,  east  and  west  alike. 

I  shall  show  that  the  law  is  not  keeping  pace  with  our 
industrial  life;  *  *  *  that  while  every  other  line  of  human 
activity  is  on  the  automobile  and  Twentieth-Century-Limited 
level,  the  courts  are  lumbering  and  creaking  along  after  jaded 
horses  in  an  ancient  stage  coach,  with  the  hoop  skirt  and  poke 
bonnet  still  a  part  of  the  apparel  of  justice.  *  *  *. 


231 


,,  ,  ,  i  ”7 -  v‘*,r  v"“-)r  L11C  iiiucpenaenr  lawyer  is 

past  that  the  influence  of  corporation  lawyers  over  courts  has 


demoralized  the  profession. 


decisions  creeping  gradually  into  the  law,  have  become  part  and 
parcel  °f  it;  and  in  some  communities  have  poisoned  the  entire 
judicial  system.  Fifty  per  cent,  if  not  more,  of  our  government 
by  laws  today  is  government  by  judicial  decision.  *  *  * 

As  a  practicing  lawyer,  as  a  candidate  for  office,  and  as 
prosecuting  attorney  of  Butte,  I  saw  the  inside  workings  of 
the  political  machinery  and  knew  the  forces  behind  judicial 
nomination3.  Time  and  again  I  saw  party  conventions  packed 
and  judges  named  in  the  interest  of  the  largest  litigant  in  my 
state.  *  *  * 

I  saw  fifteen  thousand  wage  earners  thrown  out  of  employ¬ 
ment  on  the  eve  of  winter  in  order  to  force  the  public  into  an 
attitude  of  consent  to  the  sway  of  local  judges  by  a  great 


corporation.  *  *  *  &  '  J  *  L 

I  knew  of  a  judge  being  trailed  at  night  like  a  beast  or  a 
felon,  and  filially  trapped  in  a  hotel  room,  where  from  mid¬ 
night  until  6  o’clock  the  following  morning  he  was  beset  by  the 
bribe  squad  of  a  corporation,  with  $250,000  finally  offered  him 
in  a  bootless  attempt  to  buy  him.  *  *  * 

In  1895  sixty  people  had  been  killed  and  300  maimed  in 
Butte  by  an  explosion  of  giant  powder  stored  contrary  to  law 
After  years  of  litigation  no  redress,  civil  or  criminal,  had  been 
secured  by  these  victims  or  their  heirs. 

I  had  known  of  a  well-to-do  man  despoiled  of  property 
amounting  to  $100,000  by  a  Supreme  Court  decision  which  dis¬ 
missed  his  appeal  because  his  lawyers  had  failed  to  comply  with 
a  rule  of  court  in  the  preparation  of  their  brief.  *  *  * 

One  case  which  I  think  accurately  photographs  the  Supreme 
Court  of  California:  The  little  five-year-old  boy  of  poor  parent* 
living  on  Tenth  street,  in  the  city  of  Oakland,  was  playing  in 
the  street.  A  street  car  ran  him  down  and  killed  him.  The 
evidence  showed  that  the  motorman  had  time  to  stop  his  car 
before  striking  the  boy.  The  parents  recovered  judgment  in 
the  lower  court  for  $6,000.  *  *  * 

The  Supreme  Court  of  California  set  aside  the  verdict  on 
the  ground  that  the  child  would  most  likely  follow  the  occu¬ 
pation  of  the  father,  and  that  as  the  father’s  occupation  was 
rather  unprofitable,  therefore  the  child  might  have  proved  more 
expensive  than  gainful  to  its  parents.* 

Not  satisfied  with  depriving  the  parents  of  their  verdict,  the 
Supreme  Court  of  California  added  in  its  opinion  this  comment 
on  poverty.  Quoting  from  a  lawyer  whose  sentiments,  let  us 
hope,  will  not  be  perpetuated  with  his  law,  it  said: 

“It  has  been  held  that  poor  parents  of  infant  children  are 
not  negligent  if  they  do  not  prevent  their  children  from  stray¬ 
ing  into  the  public  streets,  or  upon  the  lines  of  highways. 

*  *  *  But  those  learned  judges  fail  to  give  due  weight  to  the 

consideration  that  the  railway  was  not  responsible  for  the  acts 
of  the  parents  in  bringing  the  children  into  the  world,  nor  for 
that  degree  of  misfortune  which  retained  those  persons  in  a 
condition  of  more  or  less  want,  and  that  there  is  no  rule  of  law 
nor  principle  of  justice  which  compels  railways  to  insure  the 
public  against  the  necessary  incidents  of  poverty,  nor  which 


232 


entitled  people,  either  poor  or  rich,  to  make,  at  the  expense  of 
railways,  profitable  speculations  out  of  the  death  of  the  children 
whom  their  own  negligence  of  parental  duty  has  exposed  to 
peril.,, 

*  *  * 

The  Standard  Oil  Company  has  dominated  the  decisions  of 
the  Supreme  Court  of  Pennsylvania  for  forty  years. 

A  Philadelphia  lawyer,  recently  arguing  a  case  before  a 
Massachusetts  court,  cited  as  authority  one  of  the  decisions  of 
his  own  state.  He  was  interrupted  rather  cavalierly,  and  told 
by  the  judge  to  pass  on  to  some  other  case.  Later  he  privately 
asked  of  the  judge  an  explanation. 

“Why,  everybody  knows,”  said  the  Massachusetts  judge, 
“that  the  decisions  of  your  courts  have  been  so  corrupt  that  no 
self-respecting  court  pays  any  attention  to  them.” 

*  *  * 

While  I  write,  a  federal  judge  in  New  York  City  fines  in 
the  sum  of  $25,000  a  rich  man  who  had  defrauded  the  Govern¬ 
ment  of  some  $1,400,000.  At  the  same  time  the  same  judge 
sentences  to  three  months’  imprisonment  a  minor  offender  who 
had  defrauded  the  Government  of  $2,500.  The  rich  smuggler 
had  netted  $1,375,000.  He  was  an  importer  of  silks.  The  Greek 
who  was  sentenced  to  jail  was  an  importer  of  dates  and  figs. 
Were  I  in  the  Greek’s  place  I  think  I  should  change  from  figs 
to  silks. 

Watch  the  elevators  in  our  federal  buildings,  and  see  the 
trembling,  handcuffed  wretches  who  enter,  charged  with  dis¬ 
tilling  a  hogshead  of  wine,  or  some  other  minor  offense.  Go 
then  into  the  office  of  the  district  attorneys  and  watch  the  trust 
magnate  who  has  levied  unlawful  tribute  on  the  nation,  in  un¬ 
fettered  conference  with  his  lawyers  and  Government  officials 
— and  tell  me  df  this  is  a  land  of  equal  law  ! 

*  m 

Twenty-four  hours  before  the  Supreme  Court  of  Colorado 
decided  the  eight-hour  law  unconstitutional,  the  fact  was  known 
and  discussed  among  insiders  in  the  lobby  of  a  Denver  hotel. 
A  Supreme  Court  judge  in  Ohio  was  publicly  charged  by  Tom 
L.  Johnson  with  giving  foreknowledge  of  one  of  his  opinions 
to  friends,  who  gambled  on  the  stock  market  on  the  strength 
of  it. 

Taft,  at  Chicago,  September  16,  1909,  said  that  such  reforms 
as  had  taken  place,  in  unjust  rules  of  law,  would  probably  have 
been  long  delayed  but  for  the  energetic  agitations  of  these 
questions  by  the  representatives  of  organized  labor. 

Frederick  R.  Coudert  of  the  New  York  City  bar  said  two 
years  ago  in  a  public  speech  in  Cooper  Union:  “I  have  heard 
of  cases — and  it  is  common  talk  among  lawyers — in  which 
$60,000,  $100,000,  and  I  believe,  as  high  as  $180,000,  have  been 
paid  for  the  ermine.  With  this  condition  existing,  it  is  easy 
to  understand  the  state  in  which  our  courts  are  today.  The 
political  judge  is  supposed  to  take  care  of  organization  men; 
and  so  it  comes  about  that  the  enormously  profitable  receiver¬ 
ships  and  refereeships  are  given  to  men  merely  because  they 
stand  well  with  the  organization.” 

(d)  COURTS  OBSTRUCT  SOCIAL  PROGRESS. 

(From  the  Chicago  Tribune,  April  11,  1912.) 

New  York,  March  31. — (Special.) — A  direct  charge  that  the 
American  judiciary  stands  in  the  way  of  “social  and  economic 
progress’’  is  made  in  the  current  issue  of  Bench  and  Bar  by  Wil¬ 
liam  J.  Gaynor,  mayor  of  New  York,  who  formerly  was  a  justice 
of  the  New  York  State  Supreme  Court. 

CITES  TENEMENT  TOBACCO  CASE. 

“Let  me  cite  some  of  the  recent  judicial  decisions  which  were 
planted  right  in  the  path  of  economic  and  social  progress. 

“The  tenement  house  tobacco  case  was  decided  by  the  Court  of 
Appeals  of  this  state  in  1885.  Good  men  and  women  who  went 


233 

f.u+red  ^  lts  various  products  in  these  tenements  Thav  C 

aTnhdeybr»dTo  Ve-fe^&i  t“j 

fi^SSth  tl‘‘e  manufacture  of  tobacco  in  such  tenements 

that  is  toUtsay;  thK^SnS&l.tlSS4  0“  tw?  ,S5f  5SSS?tSSa&; 
l”|p«Srer?o0uld  i?tCf°ort1idTtf  tenements'  and  tha‘.  therefore,  the 

the  general  provision0  innourhstatencon\UtiiuifonPthatSlno  one6  shall 
•be^depr.ved  of  life,  liberty  or  property  without  du?  p?ocess  *f 

BAKERY  LAW  HELD  VOID. 

“Some  years  later  similar  good  and  intellie-Pnt 
brought  about  the  enactment  of  a  statute  in  the  legislature  of 
this  state  for  the  sanitary  regulation  of  underground  bakeries 

c°orm^n?fykeg^etrhailyhealth  °f  th°Se  *»  the^inWtffi 

PIoS  ^aSorSea£aarfeSnaSodu^0a  *Sg  X 

W°^TnbeLn&  PrinciPaHy  done  in  the  night  time.  Y’  th® 

f ke  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  declared  this  ten-hour 
requirement  to  be  unconstitutional,  as  depriving  workmen  with 
out  due  process  of  law,  of  the  'liberty  to  work'aTlSSg  hou«  m 
they  saw  fit  in  underground  bakeries.  S  nours  as 

tinoHS6  lea™ed  court  stood  5  to  4.  That  division  certainly  showed 
that  the  matter  was  one  of  great  doubt.  And  yet,  notwithstanding 
a  rule  which  is  often  repeated  by  the  courts,  that  they  will  de- 
£rve  A  statute  unconstitutional  only  in  a  case  free  from  doubt 
dffj£Te«S.  h!  •?  st£tute  unconstitutional.  The  same  court  has 
state  of°doubMn*the  court?"0*6  of  5  *°  4'  What  is  5  *o  4  b‘uX 
PROTECTION  TO  WOMEN  DENIED. 

“In  1893  the  legislature  of  this  state  passed  a  statute  that- 
work  in  factories  between  the  hours  of  9  at 
mornm^-  This  statute  was  intended  to  pro¬ 
tect  the  health  of  women  and  hence  of  their  offspring 
tho  inconceivable  that  the  gentlemen  then  composing 

lw°^f  °/  ApP.eals.  of  this  State  found  in  this  humane  and  benev? 
olei+v.  statute  an  infringement  of  the  ‘liberty’  of  women  guaranteed 
as  they  said,  by  the  constitution,  to  work  in  factories  all  night 
and  as  many  hours  as  they  saw  fit.  nignt 

_ ‘^t  is  not  at  all  to  be  wondered  at  that  such  decisions  should 

provoke  a  widespread  dissatisfaction  with  the  courts.  The  just 
feeling  prevading  the  community  is  that  a  bench  of  judges  is  no 
more  competent  than  the  legislature  to  decide  as  to  the  wisdom 
or  necessity  of  such  laws  for  the  health,  safety  and  progress  and 
the  material  and  moral  welfare  of  the  community.  That  is  a  mat- 
3®r.  ^lightened  opinion  which  the  courts  have  no  right  to  arro¬ 
gate  unto  themselves.  The  courts  of  England  do  not  do  it  nor 
do  the  courts  of  any  other  country  except  ours. 

RECALL  OF  DECISIONS  NOT  NEW. 

I  might  also  refer  to  the  decisions  of  our  Court  of  Appeals 
declaring  statutes  void  which  provided  that  employes  on  state  or 
municipal  works  under  contractors  should  not  be  paid  less  than 
the  prevailing  rate  of  wages  nor  required  to  work  more  than  a 
certain  number  of  hours  a  day. 

“These  decisions  so  exasperated  the  people  of  this  state  that 

they  swept  them  all  out  of  existence — ‘recalled’  them,  if  you  will _ 

by  a  constitutional  amendment  in  1905. 

EMPLOYERS’  LIABILITY  ACT. 

fV.  “N?^  1?t  P1 e  mention  the  decision  of  the  Court  of  Appeals  of 
this  state  last  year  which  overthrew  the  employers’  liability  stat¬ 
ute  passed  by  our  legislature  the  year  before.  The  rule  of  the 
common  law  is  that  the  law  casts  upon  all  employes  the  necessary 
or  inherent  risks  of  the  work  or  business  in  which  they  are  em¬ 
ployed.  Some  opinions  of  judges  clumsily  say  that  the  employe 
assumes  these  risks.  He  does  no  such  thing.  He  is  not  consulted 
about  it.  The  comomn  law  casts  such  risks  upon  him. 

This  statute  changed  the  common  law  rule  in  eight  enumer¬ 
ate;1  especially  dangerous’  employments  and  enacted  that  the  said 
risks  should  be  taken  off  of  the  employe  and  put  upon  th  em¬ 
ployer.  The  legislature  thought  it  had  a  perfect  right  to  do  this 
and  was  so  advised  by  the  ablest  advisers. 

t  »*!?*  Is  Pitiful  to  see  such  decisions  in  this  country.  Every 
civilized  government  in  the  world  outside  of  this  country  has  an 
employers  liability  act,  also  embracing  provisions  for  the  taxation 
of  businesses  in  which  workmen  are  employed  to  raise  a  fund  for 
the  payment  of  such  damages  for  deaths  and  Injuries  by  acci¬ 
dents. 

(e)  CORRUPTING  THE  CHURCH. 

(From  “The  Beast,”  by  Judge  Lindsey.  Published  by  Double¬ 
day,  Page  &  Co.) 

It  was  necessary  to  have  a  candidate  who  would  give  re¬ 
spectability  to  corruption. 

Mr.  Evans  found  his  man  in  the  Reverend  Henry  Augustus 


234 


Buchtel,  D.  D.,  L.  L.  D.,  a  minister  of  the  Methodist  Church, 
who  was  a  Chancellor  of  the  Denver  University  1  And  after  a 
harmony  meeting  at  which  Mr.  Buchtel  accepted  the  nomination 
he  invited  Mr.  Evans’  emissaries  to  rise  with  him,  join  hands 
and  sing  “Blest  Be  the  Tie  That  Binds”  1 

The  use  of  Buchtel  in  the  campaign  that  followed  was  a  huge 
success.  Everywhere  people  said  to  me:  “Why,  the  Chan¬ 
cellor  will  never  stand  for  the  sale  of  the  senatorship  to  Gug¬ 
genheim  1”  Or  the  “dear  Chancellor”  will  never  permit  this  or 
that  undesirable  thing  in  politics.  But  Buchtel  had  already 
admitted  to  a  ministerial  friend  that  he  believed  Guggenheim 
ought  to  be  elected — though  he  said  nothing  of  it  from  the 
platform,  you  may  be  sure.  After  he  was  Governor,  he  not  only 
endorsed  Guggenheim  but  vigorously  defended  the  Legislature 
for  electing  Guggenheim,  honored  Evans  with  a  place  on  the 
gubernatorial  staff  and  gave  a  public  dinner  to  the  corporation 
heads  who  had  most  profited  by  the  rule  of  the  System  in  the 
state.  They  reciprocated  by  sending  the  Denver  University 
handsome  donations;  Evans  led  with  $10,000  and  Guggenheim, 
Hughes  and  others  followed  with  fat  checks.  *  *  *” 

When  a  petition  was  recently  being  circulated  to  renominate 
me  as  Judge  of  the  Juvenile  Court,  a  pastor  of  one  of  the  most 
influential  churches  in  Denver  refused  to  sign  the  petition  be¬ 
cause  I  had  “offended  so  many  business  men.”  “I  can’t  come 
out  publicly,”  he.  said.  “I  like  Judge  Lindsey.  I  think  he  is 
right.  But  we  hare  to  build.”  For  the  same  reason  a  Denver 
prelate  who  was  raising  money  to  build  a  new  church  wrote  to 
one  of  his  clergy,  who  was  making  platform  speeches  on  behalf 
of  the  Anti-Saloon  League,  and  ordered  him  to  be  silent.  The 
Christian  Citizenship  Union — during  my  last  non-partisan  and 
non-political  campaign  for  the  judgeship — endeavored  to  obtain 
the  use  of  a  downtown  church  in  which  to  hold  an  afternoon 
meeting  in  support  of  my  candidacy,  at  which  Father  O’Ryan, 
Rabbi  Kauvar  and  a  number  of  other  clergymen  were  to  speak; 
no  such  church  would  allow  them  to  hold  the  meeting  under  its 
roof. 

The  young  men  of  the  Christian  Citizenship  Union  were 
members  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  But  an  assistant  secretary  of  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.,  during  this  same  non-political  campaign,  told  me 
frankly  that  I  could  not  be  allowed  to  speak  from  the  platform 
of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  hall,  because,  he  said,  “we  have  to  get  our 
subscriptions  from  the  business  men  to  run  the  association.” 
Pages  275-276. 

t  Failure  of  the  Church  To  Do  Its  Social  Duty. 

By  Washington  Gladden. 

(Extract  from  an  address  at  the  National  Council  of  the  Con¬ 
gregational  Churches,  Cleveland,  Ohio,  1907.) 

[The  following  paragraphs  are  not  from  an  enemy  or  opponent 
of  the  church.  They  are  from  one  of  its  own  members  and 
leaders — perhaps  one  of  the  best  known  and  most  widely 
respected  men  in  the  Protestant  Church  in  America*] 
Where  was  the  Christian  Church  when  the  grafters  were 
ravaging  the  cities  and  the  rebate  robbers  and  the  frenzied 
financiers  and  the  insurance  sharks  were  getting  in  their  work? 
For  the  most  part  she  has  been  standing  by  and  looking  on, 
winking  her  eyes  and  twiddling  her  thumbs,  and  wondering 
whether  she  had  any  call  to  interfere. 

The  prophets  of  old  had  no  such  embarrassment  in  defining 
their  function.  Here  and  there  a  prophetic  voice  has  been 
heard,  in  our  own  time,  but  against  these  monumental  injustices 
with  which  the  nation  is  now  in  a  life  and  death  grapple,  the 
church  has  lifted  up  no  clear  and  effectual  protest. 

Indeed,  she  has  gathered  into  her  communion  many  of  the 


most  conspicuous  of  the  perpetrators  of  these  injustices — they 
are  nearly  all  church  members— and  has  made  herself  a  pen¬ 
sioner  upon  their  bounty,  and  has  been  content  with  preaching 
to  them  the  “simple  gospel”  that  such  men  always  love  to  hear! 

It  is  a  sad  business,  brethren,  a  sad  and  shameful  business; 
and  I  am  afraid  that  most  of  us  have  had  some  part  in  it. 

*  *  *  *  *  * 

The  fact  is  plainly  apparent  that  the  Church  has  lost  her 
grip  on  the  world,  and  she  is  not  going  to  regain  it  until  she 
finds  out  what  is  her  real  business  in  the  world.  Her  enfeeble- 
ment  is  due  to  her  failure  to  grapple  with  the  task  assigned  her 

******  « 

What  has  wrought  the  ruin  of  Russia?  It  is  the  Church  of 
Russia.  The  Church  of  Russia  has  not  only  failed  to  enforce 
the  social  teachings  of  Jesus  Christ,  she  has  flatly  repudiated 
them.  . 

The  revolution  registers  the  doom  of  a  social  order  resting 
on  stark  egoism,  and  of  a  church  which  stood  sponsor  for  that 
social  order.  For  us  this  tragedy  holds  a  note  of  warning. 
I  do  not  think  that  the  Church  in  America  is  promoting  an 
anti-Christian  social  order;  she  is  simply  permitting  it  to  exist. 
She  must  prevent  its  existence  or  she  will  go  down  in  the  ruin 
which  it  is  sure  to  bring. 

Dr.  George  Chalmers  Richmond’s  Sermon  on  “Christian  Stand¬ 
ards  in  Life”  at  St.  John's  Episcopal  Church. 

(From  the  Denver  Daily  Post,  April  7,  1913.) 

Jn  the  Episcopal  Church,  Mr.  Morgan  controlled  our  house 
of  bishops.  For  years  he  has  prevented  our  church  from  declar¬ 
ing  her  position  on  the  great  social  and  industrial  problems  of 
our  age  so  that  the  Episcopal  Church  is  at  the  fag  end  of  things. 
Our  church  will  never  progress  till  about  twenty-five  rich  cor¬ 
poration  officers  and  retired  financiers  and  aristocratic  gentle¬ 
men  who  at  present  control  our  church  go  to  join  Mr.  Morgan 
up  above  the  skies.  The  sooner  they  go  the  better. 

5.  Commercial  Frauds. 

(a)  WATERED  STOCK. 

(From  Everybody’s  Magazine,  April,  1913.  Thomas  W.  Lawson.) 

Sixty  billion  dollars  of  the  nation’s  wealth  is  represented  in 
stocks  and  bonds.  Over  $40,000,000,000  of  the  $60,000,000,000  of 
the  stocks  and  bonds  capital  is  counterfeit.  This  $40,000,000,000 
represented  when  issued  no  accumulated  labor — it  represented 
nothing  but  a  brick,  and  this  $40,000,000,000  fictitious  capital  is 
largely  owned  by  10,000  people  who  every  year  receive  $21,000,- 
000,000  interest  for  it. 

Overcapitalization  of  the  Tobacco  Trust. 

(From  “Concentration  and  Control,”  by  Charles  R.  Van  Hise, 
pages  142-143-145.  Published  by  the  Macmillan  Company.) 

At  each  step  in  the  development  of  the  American  Tobacco 
Company,  there  was  opportunity  for  increasing  its  securities, 
both  stocks  and  bonds;  and  this  was  done  at  each  transforma¬ 
tion  upon  a  great  scale;  accrued  earnings  and  good  will  were 
capitalized  and  common  stock  was  issued  as  a  bonus.  Each 
company  when  taken  into  a  new  organization  was  treated  most 
liberally  in  the  estimate  of  values,  in  some  cases  the  amount  of 
bonds  issued  being  double  stock  previously  held.  In  1908  the 
good  will  of  the  American  Tobacco  Company  represented  a 
capitalization  of  $105,000,000;  whereas  its  cash,  value  according 
to  the  Bureau  of  Corporations  was  only  about  $39,000,000,  or 
37  per  cent.  Altogether,  the  transformations  resulted  in  the 
enormous  capitalization  mentioned. 


236 

As  illustrating  the  amount  of  the  expansion,  it  may  be  said 
that  the  capital  of  one  of  the  constituent  businesses  of  the  com- 
pany  in  1885  was  $250,000.  When  the  American  Tobacco  Com- 
pany  was  organized  this  went  in  on  the  basis  of  $7,500,000  in 
*99^0000  19°?  thet  readiustment  of  this  amount  had  reached 
CaSh  dlvldends  and  interest  had  amounted  to 
*l0,yuu,000.  Ihus  an  original  investment  of  $250,000  had  by 
1908  realized  in  stocks,  bonds,  dividends  and  interest  $39,000,000 
or  one  hundred  and  fifty-six  times  the  value  of  the  busines* 
in  1885. 

Overcapitalization  of  the  Steel  Trust. 

(From  “Concentration  and  Control,”  by  Charles  R.  Van  Hise, 
pages  115-116.  Published  by  the  Macmillan  Company.) 

The  capitalization  of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation, 
after  acquiring  the  Shelby  Company,  was  as  follows: 

Common  stock  . 1  . * 

Steel  Corporation  bonds . 

Underlying-  bonds  . . . . . ! ! ! ! ! ! . . ! ! '. '. '. ! ! !  59  091  fi? 

Purchase-money  obligations  and  real  estate  mortgages  2l]872,02f 

Total  . . 

As  a  result  of  careful  investigation,  the  Commissioner  of  Cor¬ 
porations  concluded  that  a  fair  valuation  of  the  entire  physical 
property  of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation  at  the  time  of 
its  organization  was  $676,000,000.  If  the  valuation  were  made 
upon  a  basis  of  the  market  value  of  the  properties  acquired  it 
would  be  approximately  $793,000,000,  and  this  figure  should 
include  the  good  will  of  the  going  business.  Using  the  higher 
figure,  the  capitalization  of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation 
exceeded  its  face  value  by  $609,000,000.  This  shows  conclusively 
that  the  common  stock  at  the  time  it  was  issued  was  all  water 
and  that  other  securities  were  inflated.  Indeed,  the  managers 
of  the  corporation  justified  their  capitalization  only  by  placing 
the  ore  deposits  at  practically  one-half  of  the  complete  valua¬ 
tion,  $700,000,000,  a  dollar  a  ton;  which,  as  any  one  who  was  or 
is  familiar  with  the  situation  knows,  was  an  excessive  valuation 
in  1901,  especially  as  a  large  part  of  the  ores  are  not  owned  in 
fee  and  royalty  must  be  paid  to  the  fee*holders.  This  valuation 
by  the  company  was  later  admitted  to  be  excessive,  since  in 
1907  the  value  placed  upon  the  ore  by  the  company  was  about 
50  cents  a  ton,  which  if  correct  would  indicate  that  the  value 
in  1901  was  still  lower.  The  bureau’s  estimate  of  the  value  of 
the  ore  at  the  time  of  the  organization  is  about  $100,000,000. 
The  comparisons  between  the  estimated  value  of  the  properties 
by  the  corporation  and  by  the  bureau  is  shown  by  the  following 
table : 

Table  31.  Value  of  Tangible  Assets  Acquired  by  Steel  Cor¬ 
poration  in  1901,  as  Computed  by  Bureau,  Compared  with  Esti¬ 
mate  of  Corporation  Submitted  in  the  Hodge  Suit  in  June,  1902 

2 

*  "b'  •-•’2d  "via 

°  5th  .2  •  o 

«  E  f>  o  C 

d  "g  ©  2 -S’0.-,  £ 

©  °  3  sv^r  ss  *3 

£  f->  n  bo—*  ~ 

3  ®  <3  O  H  S3  P 

mtdJ>  °  d 

Class  of  Property.  S  H 

Ore  property. . $100,000,000  $  700,000,000  $600,000  066 

Manufacturing  plants, 
including  blast  fur¬ 
naces  .  250,000,000  348,000,000  08,000  000 

Railroad,  steamship  and 

dock  property  .  91,500,000  120,340,000(2)  28  840  000 

Coal  and  coke  property  80,000,000  100,000,000  20,000  000 

Natural  gas  property...  20,000,000  20,000,000  ..  ’ 

Limestone  properties...  4,000,000  4,000,000  ’ 

Cash  and  cash  assets...  136,000,000  164,660,000(3)  28,160, 000 

Total  . $682,000,000  $1,457,000,000  $776,000,000 


237 


(1)  A  part  of  the  differences  between  the  two  estimates  is  ac¬ 
counted  for  through  additions  made  to  property  during  the 
interval  from  April  1,  1901,  to  July  1,  1902,  such  additions,  of 
course,  being  included  in  the  corporation's  figures 

(2)  This  figure  includes  $40,340,000  of  indebtedness  which  was 
not  Included  in  the  estimate  of  the  corporation,  this  addition 
being  made  in  order  to  render  the  estimates  comparable. 

(3)  In  arriving  at  this  figure  purchase  money  obligations  and 
real  estate  mortgages  of  $16,369,000,  which  were  deducted 
by  the  corporation,  were  restored  by  the  Bureau  to  make 
the  amounts  comparable. 


Watered  Railway  Stocks. 

(From  New  York  World  Almanacs,  First  Lines,  1892;  Second 
Lines,  1909.) 


A.,  T.  &  S.  P . $323,332,000 

Same,  1909  . .  527,357,780 

Baltimore  &  Ohio..  58,492,000 

Same,  1909  .  467,708,259 

Can.  Pacific .  112,956,686 

Same,  1909  .  161,918,086 

Q .  187,852,082 

-  293,903,100 

30,539,350 
99,316,100 
197,678,161 


255,530,800 

101,333,000 

249,191,600 

175.344.700 
269,093,600 

20,000,000 

269.713.700 


C.,  B. 

Same,  1909 

Chicago  &  Alton.. 

Same,  1909  . 

C.,  M.  &  St.  P _ 

Same,  1909  . 

C.,  R.  I.  &  P . 

Same,  1909  . 

Chicago  &  N.  W. .  . 

Same,  1909  . 

Great  Northern  .  .  . 

Same,  1909  . 

Illinois  Central .  71,713,500 

Same,  1909  .  234,986,275 

Mexican  Central....  102,932,000 

Same,  1909  .  197,711,838 

M.,  K.  &  T .  120,000,000 

Same,  1909  .  152,600,600 

Total  capitalization  24  North 
1  Mexican): 

1892 . 

1909 . 

Watered  stock . . 

(Probably  10  per  cent  of  this 
absorption  of  other  properties.) 


Missouri  Pacific.... 

Same,  1909  . 

N.  J.  Central . 

Same,  1909  _ 

New  York  Central.. 

Same,  1909  . 

Norfolk  &  Western. 

Same,  1909  . 

P.,  C.  C.  &  St.  Li.  .  . 

Same,  1909  . 

P.,  Ft.  W.  &  C . 

Same,  1909  . 

Pullman  Co . 

Same,  1909  . 

Southern  Pacific.... 

Same,  1909  . 

Union  Pacific  . 

Same,  1909  . 

Wabash  . 

Same,  1909  . . 

Wheeling  &  L.  E... 

Same,  1909  . 

Wisconsin  Central.. 

Same,  1909  . 

American  railroads  (1 


$98,808,850 
172,278,913* 
66, 607.009 
80,287,800 
157,505,631 
409,046,845 
95,083,311 
175,313,400 
84,260,100 
112,959,091 
46,498,575 
65,324,609 
30,820,000 
100,000,000 
118,858,170 
312,173,297 
184,701,647 
520,059,200 
130,000,000 
208,884,346 
17,119,000 
51,980,400 
24,000,00© 
61,865,105 
Canadian, 


.  $2,536,435,765 

.  5,449,204,907 

.  2,912,769,142 

increase  is  lqgitmate,  due  to  the 


Ninety-five  Per  Cent  of  Railroad  Stock  Is  Water. 


(Special  Dispatch  to  the  Chicago  Record-Herald,  April  23,  1908.) 

New  York,  April  23. — When  Thomas  F.  Ryan  was  before  the 
special  grand  jury  investigating  the  affairs  of  the  Metropolitan 
Street  Railway  Company,  he  said  that  95  per  cent  of  the  stock 
of  all  railroad  corporations  in  this  country  never  cost  a  dollar. 

There  was  great  surprise  and  many  of  the  jurors  questioned 
Mr.  Ryan,  believing  that  they  had  misunderstood,  but  the  only 
one  in  the  room  who  manifested  no  surprise  was  Mr.  Jerome, 
who,  before  Mr.  Ryan  appeared  before  the  jury,  had  carefully 
gone  over  all  the  testimony  with  him.  *  *  * 

Ryan  had  figured  out  that  the  $52,000,000  of  Metropolitan 
Street  Railway  stock  represented  cash  payments  of  8 3l/2  per 
cent  of  its  par  value.  As  Mr.  Jerome  read  this  statement,  Ryan 
interrupted,  saying,  “Gentlemen,  this  is  the  answer  to  the  state¬ 
ment  that  has  been  made  for  the  last  five  years  that  the  Metro¬ 
politan  Street  Railway  stock  is  all  water.” 

Mr.  Jerome  promptly  came  to  the  witness’  rescue,  saying: 
“Mr.  Ryan,  you  have  been  connected  with  a  large  number  of 
corporate  ventures,  both  in  street  railways  and  in  steam  rail¬ 
ways,  have  you  not?” 

“Yes,  sir,”  answered  Ryan. 

“And,  as  a  banker,  you  have  been  familiar  with  the  capital¬ 
ization  of  many  of  the  railroads  of  this  country,  have  you  not?” 

“Yes,  sir.” 

“How  will  that  compare — that  percentage  of  water,  if  you 
call  it  such?” 

“Ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  stock  of  railroad  corporations  of 
this  country  never  cost  a  dollar,”  was  Mr.  Ryan's  declaration. 


238 


“You  mean,” 
the  stock  of  the 


u 


Yes. 


99 


said  Mr.  Jerome,  “that  ninety-five  per  cent  of 
railroads  of  this  country  is  all  water?” 


“Please  explain,”  said  Mr.  Jerome. 

“Well,”  said  Mr.  Ryan,  “the  railroads  in  the  last  of  these 
great  speculative  years  have  put  up  stock  so  that  it  was  easy  to 
raise  money  on  stocks  and  bonds;  but  up  to  1885  ninety-five 
per  cent  of  all  steam  railroads  and  all  street  railroads  and  all 
industrial  corporations  of  this  country  never  put  in  one  dollar 
on  their  stock  except  organization  expenses  that  were  required 
for  a  few  shares  of  stock  in  the  beginning.” 

“So,  then,”  said  Mr.  Jerome,  “your  experience  in  these  mat¬ 
ters  is  that  $83.50  cash  paid  in  for  every  $100  stock  is  excep¬ 
tional  ?” 

“Yes,  sir.  Up  to  1878  there  was  not  a  dollar  paid  in  on  St. 
Paul,  Northwestern,  Omaha,  or  any  of  these  railroads.” 

Mr.  Jerome  asked  Mr.  Ryan  for  another  explanation,  but  the 
witness  waited  until  the  district  attorney  put  another  question. 

“If  you  took  these  roads  as  they  stand  today,  including  the 
roads  that,  have  been  organized  and  supposed  to  be  put  upon  a 
sound  basis,  taking  them  as  a  whole,  both  in  steam  railroading 
and  surface  railroading,  would  $83.50  in  cash  for  every  share  of 
$100  par  be  a  large  percentage  of  cash?” 

“A  large  percentage,”  replied  Mr.  Ryan.  “Ninety  per  cent 
of  them  haven’t  had  anything.  Not  only  that;  in  the  reorgani¬ 
zation  that  took  place  from  1900  to  1907,  they  assessed  these 
stocks  and  gave  bonds.” 

(b)  ADULTERATION  OF  FOODS. 

Extent  of  Adulteration  of  Foods. 


(From  “Mass  an*d  Class,”  by  Ghent.  Published  by  the  Mac¬ 
millan  Company.) 

The  extent  of  the  adulteration  graft  in  food  has  been  vari¬ 
ously  estimated.  The  editor  of  the  American  Grocer,  a  repre¬ 
sentative  of  the  trading  class,  has  placed  it  as  low  as  one  per 
cent.  Even  at  this  estimate,  the  amount  paid  for  fraudulent 
food  by  the  American  public  in  one  year  would  approximate 
$75,000,000.  Dr.  H.  W.  Wiley  has  recently  placed  the  amount 
of  adulteration  at  5  per  cent.  This  would  mean  an  annual  graft¬ 
ing  charge  on  the  public  of  $375,000,000.  Dr.  I.  W.  Abbott, 
Secretary  of  the  State  Board  of  Health  of  Massachusetts,  puts 
it  at  10  per  cent,  or  $750,000,000  yearly. 

*  *  *  *  *  * 

Despite  these  laws  (in  twenty-six  states  and  territories),  the 
adulteration  still  continues.  In  New  York  City,  during  1902,  of 
3,970  samples  of  milk  taken  from  dealers  for  analysis,  2,095,  or 
52.77  per  cent,  were  found  to  be  adulterated. 

Well  nigh  as  instructive  is  the  testimony  from  Ohio.  The 
Dairy  and  Food  Department  of  that  state  was  created  in  1886. 
After  seventeen  years  of  inspections,  arrests  and  prosecutions, 
adulterations  of  milk  still  continue.  “Out  of  1,199  samples 
tested  by  the  chemists,”  says  the  report  for  the  year  ending 
November  15,  1903,  “about  one-fourth  were  found  to  be  either 
below  the  required  standard  in  solids  and  butter  fats,  or  adul¬ 
terated  with  that  base  adulterant  known  as  ‘formalin’  or  “for¬ 
maldehyde’  ”  (Eighteenth  Annual  Report  of  the  Ohio  Dairy  and 
Food  Commission,  1903,  page8). 

*  *  *  *  *  * 

Mention  may  be  given  to  the  analysis  of  a  certain  “alum 
baking  power”  made  by  Health  Commissioner  Lederle,  in  New 
York  City,  early  in  1902.  This  powder  was  widely  advertised 
and  sold  in  large  quantities.  It  was  found  to  contain  about  30 
per  cent  of  pulverized  rock. 


239 


i  9 

“Methyl  Alcohol,”  says  the  latest  report  of  the  New  York 
State  Board  of  Pharmacy,  “is  commonly  recognized  to  be  a 
very  dangerous  poison.”  Taken  internally  it  is  known  to  have 
caused  St.  Vitus’  dance,  paralysis  and  total  blindness.  Even 
when  used  externally  it  is  exceedingly  harmful.  Yet  in  1903, 
Dr.  Lederle,  then  the  head  of  the  New  York  City  Health  De¬ 
partment,  found  that  some  forty  druggists  were  using  it,  not 
only  in  spirits  of  ammonia,  but  in  tincture  of  ginger. 

*  *  *  *  *  * 

Dr.  Lederle’s  statement  of  January  14,  1903,  showed  that  of 
373  samples  of  alleged  phenacetin  purchased  from  druggists  in 
Manhattan  and  Brooklyn,  “315  were  found  to  be  adulterated 
*  *  *  Only  58  were  pure.”  (The  Health  Department,  1903, 
page  25.)  — W.  J.  Ghent,  “Mass  and  Class.” 

Per  Cent  of  Adulteration. 


Milk  . 

Skim-milk  . 

Cream  . 

Condensed  milk  . 

Butter  . 

Ice  cream . 

Meat  and  fish,  2;  hambur¬ 
ger,  4  . . . 

Canned  foods  and  dried 

fruits  . 

Vinegars  . . 

Extracts  . ♦ . 

Soft  drinks  . 

Molasses,  syrups  and  honey 
Confectionery,  32;  candy¬ 
making  materials,  9 . 

Flour  . 

Coffee,  spices,  etc . 

Baking  powders  . 

Olive  oil . 

Sanitary  Inspection,  drink¬ 
ing  waters  . 

Spirits  camphor  . 

Iodine  tincture  . 

Nitre  spirits  .  . . . . 

Patent  medicines  and  drugs 
Total  drugs  . 

Totals  . 


Total 

amples. 

amples 

>assed. 

Adul- 
erated 
r  mis- 
randed. 

Per 

nt  adul¬ 
ation  or 

bo 

xsi  ~ 

...T  4)  HI 

.'V  o-*-> 

'  '  56.1 

659 

289 

370  ' 

103 

19 

84 

81.6 

219 

110 

109 

49.8 

17 

3 

13 

76.5 

16 

2 

14 

87.5 

69 

6 

63 

91.3 

6 

0 

6 

100 

12 

5 

7 

58.3 

7 

0 

7 

100 

23 

7 

16 

69.6 

25 

23 

2 

8 

8 

5 

3 

37.5 

41 

18 

23 

56.1 

4 

2 

2 

3 

3 

0 

2 

1 

1 

*  *  | 

3 

3 

0 

18 

6 

12 

34 

13 

21 

61.8 

8 

0 

8 

109 

5 

2 

3 

60 

9 

3 

6 

66.7 

56 

18 

38 

66.1 

1,313 

530 

779 

59.3 

(c)  FRAUDULENT  WEIGHTS  AND  MEASURES. 


(From  “The  Government  to  the  Rescue,”  by  John  Dyer,  in 
Good  Housekeeping,  March,  1911.) 

Dr.  L.  A.  Fisher  is  in  charge  of  the  weights  and  measures 
department  ol  the  Federal  Bureau  of  Standards  at  Washington. 
He  went  to  Vermont  to  attend  a  conference  called  by  the  gov¬ 
ernor  to  consider  what  state  legislation  was  neccessary. 

“Things  were  pretty  bad  in  Vermont,”  said  Dr.  Fisher. 
“Perhaps  they  were  no  worse  than  elsewhere;  still,  in  five  towns 
we  found  that  40  per  cent  of  the  scales  were  incorrect  to  the 
extent  of  3  per  cent  or  more,  and  88  per  cent  of  the  errors  were 
against  consumers. 

“Of  22  balances  examined  in  one  town,  six  showed  errors  of 
between  3  and  6  per  cent,  one  between  6  and  9  per  cent  and 
one  between  9  and  12  per  cent. 

“Butter  is  sold  in  Vermont  by  the  print.  There  were  two 
popular  brands  which  all  dealers  carried.  One  was  full  weight, 
the  other  was  an  ounce  short.  In  the  half-pound  prints  the 
shortage  amounted  to  11  per  cent.  Both  brands  sold  for  the 
same  price.  We  figured  that  in  a  town  of  5,000  people,  if  one- 
third  of  the  butter  sold  was  short  to  this  extent,  the  loss  to  the 
consumers  in  a  year  would  be  $1,000. 


“Oil  is  measured  out  by  oil  pumps  which  are  supposed  to 


delivered  as  much  as  23  per  cent. 

“In  some  cases  dealers  used  neither  weights  nor  measures, 
but  filled  ‘sixteen-pound  bags,’  and  these  bags  were  sometimes 
11  per  cent  short  of  the  correct  measure.  In  one  town  the 
shortage  measured  12  per  cent;  in  another  it  reached  17  per 
cent.  Moreover,  the  bags  were  made  of  very  heavy  paper.  The 
salesmen  for  the  paper  houses  were  wont  to  tell  the  grocers, 
‘You’ll  find  that  the  bags  weigh  well  and  you’ll  get  the  cost  of 
them  all  back’.” 

“Another  way  in  which  the  consumer  is  cheated  is  by  having 
the  wooden  sticks  used  to  spread  lamb,  pork  and  beef  weighed 
with  the  meat.  In  many  cities  the  butchers  have  been  prose¬ 
cuted  for  this  form  of  swindling. 

“But  there  is  still  another  method  of  beating  the  consumer. 
This  is  in  using  liquid  measures  in  the  sale  of  dry  commodities. 
The  dealer  gains  about  15  per  cent  in  this  way.  It  is  a  common 
practice  where  there  is  no  inspection.  Beans,  berries  and  other 
similar  articles  are  often  sold  in  this  way.  When  prevented 
from  doing  this  the  dealer  will  often  sell  by  the  cupful,  or  he 
will  use  some  other  article  for  a  measure. 

“How  much  the  public  pays  for  paper,  twine,  skeiners, 
spreaders  and  other  things  which  are  weighed  in  with  the  goods 
purchased  and  charged  at  the  same  price  is  very  hard  to  deter¬ 
mine,  but  take  the  country  over  and  it  probably  exceeds  $1,000,- 
000  a  year. 

“After  a  careful  computation,  we  have  reached  the  conclusion 
that  the  people  of  Philadelphia  pay  $106,000  a  year  for  the 
wooden  trays  in  which  they  buy  butter.  This  added  to  the 
shrinkage  through  short  weights  brings  the  loss  on  'butter  in 
that  city  up  to  $330,000  a  year.  The  sales  of  meats  amount  to 
about  $30,000,000  a  year  in  Philadelphia,  and  as  the  scales  were 
found  to  average  2.6  per  cent  short  weight,  the  public  lost  on 
this  item  the  considerable  sum  of  $780,000  in  one  year.  It  was 
probably  more,  for  manipulation  of  scales  in  weighing,  not 
taken  into  account  here,  is  more  general  than  one  would 
suppose. 

“And  so  it  went  down  the  whole  list  from  cheese  to  poultry, 
from  bread  to  fish,  from  sugar  to  lard  and  tea.  It  has  been 
conservatively  estimated  that  in  Philadelphia  alone  the  con¬ 
sumers  paid  every  year  $2,419,000  for  goods  they  never  received 
at  all. 

“When  our  inspectors  got  to  Helena,  Mont.,  they  found  short 
weighing  general;  about  47^2  per  cent  of  the  scales  delivered 
inaccurate  quantities  and  in  three  cases  out  of  four  they  gave 
short  weight.  Conditions  in  Butte  were  worse  than  they  were 
in  Helena. 

“We  had  a  special  report  from  New  York  on  threads.  A 
shortage  of  27  per  cent  is  not  unusual.  Of  538  spools  tested 
we  found  8  per  cent  short  from  1  to  37j4  per  cent  and  15  per 
cent  containing  about  ^2  per  cent  too  much. 

“We  have  found  loaves  of  bread  weighing  only  11  ounces 
when  they  were  supposed  to  weigh  16.” 

(d)  ROBBING  THE  GOVERNMENT  ON  CHARGES  FOR 
CARRYING  MAIL. 

(From  “Public  Ownership  of  Railways,”  by  Carl  D.  Thompson.) 

The  plunder  of  the  mail  service  is  another  fraud.  In  the 
first  place  the  railroads  have  managed  by  one  means  or  another 
to  keep  the  charges  for  carrying  mail  far  above  every  other 
rate.  They  get  from  two  to  four  times  as  much  for  hauling 
mails  as  they  do  from  the  express  companies  for  equal  service. 
In  other  words,  on  the  basis  of  what  they  charge  express  com¬ 
panies  the  railroads  charge  the  government  from  two  to  four 


241 


times  what  they  ought  to  charge  for  hauling  mails.  (“Railways, 
Trusts  and  the  People,”  page  139  ff.) 

But  that  is  only  a  part  of  the  story.  Besides  these  exorbi¬ 
tant  rates  for  hauling  mails  the  railroads  work  another  graft. 
They  charge  the  government  an  average  of  $6,250  per  car  for 
the  rent  on  postal  cars.  Postmaster  General  Vilas,  in  his  re¬ 
port  1887,  page  56  (quoted  by  Parsons)  says:  “In  other  words, 
in  addition  to  paying  rates  that  are  clearly  extortionate  the 
railroads  get  in  rentals  for  the  mail  cars  every  year  more  than 
the  cars  are  worth.”  This  means  a  clear  robbery  of  $5,386,000 
per  year. 

But  the  climax  of  the  fraud  is  yet  to  come.  To  all  the  above 
the  railroads  add  yet  another  atrocity— they  cheat  the  govern¬ 
ment  by  false  weight.  The  contracts  for  carrying  the  mails  are 
let  on  the  basis  of  the  estimated  weight.  To  reach  this  estimate 
the  mails  are  weighed  once  every  four  years.  It  has  been 
proven  that  during  the  period  of  the  weighing  of  the  mails  the 
railroads  have  resorted  to  all  sorts  of  fraudulent  methods  in 
order  to  pad  the  mails  and  exaggerate  the  weights.  Thousands 
of  pounds  of  empty  sacks  are  shipped  back  and  forth;  “bundles 
of  wire  6  feet  high  and  6  feet  around,  bags  of  seeds,  supplies 
for  the  army,  tons  of  documents  packed  in  wooden  boxes  that 
sometimes  require  three  men  to  handle,  millions  of  blanks  of 
the  Census  Office  (report  of  Postmaster  General  Wanamaker, 
1893)  are  loaded  in  the  mails.  In  one  case  300  sacks  of  docu¬ 
ments  weighing  from  100-125  pounds  were  mailed  out  over  a 
railway  system  by  a  United  States  Senator  (J.  B.  Gordon)  and 
a  member  of  Congress  (A.  C.  Latimer)  and  deliberately  re¬ 
mailed  over  again  so  as  to  be  weighed  and  reweighed  to  increase 
the  total.  (Senate  Document,  54th  Congress,  2d  Session,  Vol. 
V,  page  27,  quoted  in  “Railways,  Trusts  and  the  People,”  page 
147,  footnote.) 

The  total  annual  loot  of  the  government  through  the  over¬ 
charges  for  the  handling  of  mails  is  estimated  at  $24,000,000. 
(“Railways,  Trusts  and  the  People,”  page  149.) 

6.  Waste. 

One  of  the  greatest  indictments  against  the  capitalist  system 
is  its  wastefulness.  Mr.  A.  M.  Simons,  in  “Wasting  Human 
Life,”  (a  book  that  can  be  obtained  from  the  National  Office 
of  the  Socialist  Party  for  10  cents),  has  given  us  a  most  vivid 
picture  of  the  extent  of  this  waste.  Extracts  from  the  book 
follow. 

(a)  LOSS  FROM  INEFFICIENT  EQUIPMENT. 

In  1910  there  were  93,349  establishments  with  an  average 
annual  product  of  less  than  $5,000.  These  factories  were  too 
small  to  own  effective  machines,  secure  the  most  efficient  skill 
or  utilize  the  mechanical  and  human  energies  with  the  least 
waste.  In  these  little  wasteful  establishments,  142,430  wage 
earners  produced  an  average  annual  product  of  $1,561  each. 
The  two  million  wage  earners  in  the  establishments  with  an 
average  annual  product  of  over  $1,000,000  each  produced  $4,491. 
Had  the  workers  in  the  smaller  establishments  worked  with  the 
same  efficiency  they  would  have  produced  three  times  as  much. 
There  were  all  told  4,599,360  workers  in  establishments  with 
less  than  $1,000,000  product.  Some  of  these  were  doubtless 
adequately  equipped.  Some  of  them  were  probably  producing 
as  much  as  in  the  larger  establishments,  but  the  fact  that  there 
is  a  steady  declining  rate  of  production  from  the  larger  to  the 
smaller  shows  that  as  a  whole  the  smaller  the  industry,  the 
greater  the  waste. 

Had  each  of  these  4,599,360  workers  produced  as  much  as 
each  of  the  two  million  workers  employed  in  the  largest  estab- 


242 


lishments  they  would  have  produced  a  little  over  $19,000,000,000 
worth  of  product  in  1909,  instead  of  which  they  produced  only 
$11,600,000,000  out  of  a  total  of  $20,600,000,000.  In  other  words, 
had  they  'been  working  with  as  efficient  instruments  as  those  in 
the  larger  factories  the  total  manufactured  product  would  have 
been  increased  by  something  over  $7,000,000,000. 

Some  one  may  raise  the  objection  that  I  am  including  the 
“cost  of  raw  material”  in  the  calculation.  This  does  not  affect 
the  use  of  the  figures  for  comparison,  unless  it  would  tend  to 
conceal  the  inefficiency  of  the  small  industry,  since  the  great 
trusts  in  steel  and  oil  and  sugar  control  the  whole  process  of 
production  from  raw  material  to  finished  product. 

I  am  going  to  keep  every  estimate  throughout  this  discus¬ 
sion  down  within  bounds  which  the  most  scrupulous  critic  can 
not  find  grounds  to  attack;  therefore,  I  am  going  to  estimate 
that  other  things  remaining  equal,  the  inefficient  management 
and  machinery  of  the  smaller  factories  reduced  our  annual  in¬ 
come  by  only  $3,000,000,000. 

(b)  LOSS  FROM  IDLE  FACTORIES. 

When  the  panic  of  1907  swept  across  the  country  even  the 
steel  trust,  the  most  economically  managed  of  any  large  in¬ 
dustry  in  the  world,  reduced  its  output  to  a  little  over  40  per 
cent  of  its  capacity.  Many  other  industries  reduced  production 
even  more.  When  the  census  of  1900  was  taken  it  was  found 
that  about  25  per  cent  of  all  the  factories  were  idle  and  this  was 
in  time  of  high  prosperity.  Remembering  the  large  number  of 
seasonal  establishments  and  those  dependent  on  the  whims  of 
trade  in  other  lines  and  on  a  multitude  of  uncertainties  inherent 
in  our  present  system,  it  is  certain  that  the  condition  found  by 
the  census  is  far  better  than  the  average.  However,  we  will 
pretend  that  it  is  always  prosperous  under  capitalism  and  say 
that  never  more  than  25  per  cent  of  the  machinery  in  the  manu¬ 
facturing  establishments  of  America  is  idle.  This  means,  how¬ 
ever,  that  $5,000,000,000  less  of  product  is  available  for  the  feed¬ 
ing,  clothing  and  housing  of  men,  women  and  children  than 
there  would  be  if  our  manufacturing  establishments  were 
efficiently  managed. 

(c)  USELESS  “SUPERINTENDENTS” 

Certainly  they  spend  energy  enough  in  management  in  the 
field  of  manufacture.  Out  of  7,678,570  persons  engaged  in  man¬ 
ufacturing  there  are  1,063,532  who  were  classified  as  proprietors 
and  firm  members  and  salaried  employes.  Since  the  average 
foreman,  shop  director,  straw  boss  and  several  other  similarly 
titled  individuals  who  are  supposed  to  be  engaged  in  the  work 
of  superintendency  have  not  yet  arisen  to  the  dignity  of  receiv-  i 
ing  salaries  instead  of  wages,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  at  least  the 
million  mentioned  above  are  to  be  counted  as  superintending.  ! 
Surely  our  manufacturing  ought  to  be  well  done  with  one  man 
in  seven  engaged  in  watching  the  other  people  work. 

To  these  salaried  employes  is  paid  each  year  almost  $1,000,- 
000,000,  or  more  than  one-fourth  as  much  as  is  paid  to  the  ! 
6,000,000  wage  earners,  who  are  being  bossed.  Of  course,  this  I 
does  not  count  the  more  than  $4,000,000,000  that  goes  in  profits  j 
to  the  owners  of  these  various  industries. 

But  the  greater  mass  of  the  energy  of  these  extremely  highly 
paid  superintendents  is  not  used  either  in  inventing  new  methods  i 
of  work,  in  improving  production  or  even  in  driving  the  workers  i 
to  greater  exertions.  I  think  that  no  manufacturer  will  deny 
that  much  more  than  half  of  it  is  used  in  fields  wholly  apart 
from  production. 


243 

(d)  LOSS  FROM  IDLE  LAND. 

The  census  of  1910  found  that  878,798,000  acres  of  land  were 
divided  up  into  farms.  Of  this,  however,  only  478,451,000  acre* 
were  improved.  The  rest  was  still  idle.  In  other  words,  only  54 
per  cent  of  the  land  that  had  been  set  aside,  fenced  in,  registered 
as  private  property,  and  county  as  farm  land  was  being  utilized 
for  the  growing  of  crops.  We  start  in,  therefore,  with  the  reali¬ 
zation  that  only  a  little  over  half  of  the  land  now  in  farms  is 
made  use  of  for  the  satisfaction  of  human  wants.  Of  course, 
there  are  great  stretches  of  this  territory  covered  with  moun¬ 
tains,  lakes,  swamps  and  deserts  impossible  of  irrigation.  Very 
much  of  this  land,  however,  could  be  used  for  game  preserves 
and  for  the  cultivation  of  crops  already  known  to  man  which 
are  peculiarly  suited  to  these  special  areas.  The  hard,  harsh 
fact  stands  out,  however,  that  with  75  per  cent  of  our  people 
having  less  food,  clothing  and  shelter  than  healthy  human  ani¬ 
mals  require,  we  are  using  but  25  per  cent  of  our  land  area  for 
productive  purposes. 

(e)  ANTIQUATED  FARMING  METHODS. 

There  is  not  a  single  crop  produced  in  the  United  States 
which  could  not  be  trebled  by  the  general  application  of  the 
methods  already  used  wherever  individual  ignorance  and  per¬ 
sonal  meddling  of  management  has  been  suppressed.  We  will 
produce  this  year,  according  to  the  estimates  of  the  Depart¬ 
ment  of  Agriculture,  values  of  something  over  nine  billions  of 
dollars.  Multiply  this  by  three  and  we  have  twenty-seven  bil¬ 
lions  of  dollars,  a  waste  of  eighteen  billions  by  present  methods. 
Nor  will  I  cut  one  single  penny  from  this  estimate,  for  it  has 
already  been  reduced  to  a  point  where  any  student  of  agri¬ 
culture  would  say  it  is  extremely  conservative. 

When  we  double  this  acreage  with  the  use  of  the  new  ma¬ 
chine  (and  remember  we  have  plenty  of  room  for  such  dou¬ 
bling)  the  total  agricultural  production  would  be  at  least  $54- 
000,000,000. 

(f)  THE  WASTE  OF  ADVERTISING. 

About  ten  years  ago  a  writer  in  Printer’s  Ink,  the  leading 
advertising  journal  of  this  country,  estimated  that  about  two 
billion  dollars  was  spent  each  year  in  various  ways  that  would 
be  designated  as  “advertising.”  When  we  recall  the  periodicals, 
catalogues,  advertising  agents,  drummers,  demonstrators,  signs, 
billboards,  circulars,  show  windows,  expensive  decorations,  and 
all  the  other  things  that  are  used  to  sell  rather  than  to  make 
goods,  this  estimate  will  be  seen  to  be  very  low.  It  was  verified 
about  the  same  time  by  another  writer  in  the  Quarterly  Publi¬ 
cations  of  the  American  Statistical  Society,  who  made  about 
the  same  estimate.  Since  then  advertising  of  every  sort  has 
increased  at  an  unparalleled  rate.  It  is  certainly  half  as  much 
more,  or  close  to  three  billion  of  dollars  today. 

That  is  a  little  more  than  seven  times  the  sum  we  spend  on 
our  educational  system,  public  or  private,  from  kindergarten  to 
university. 

(g)  THE  WASTE  OF  UNEMPLOYMENT. 

The  census  takers  of  1910  found  that  6,468,964,  or  22  per 
cent  of  all  the  workers,  were  unemployed  at  some  time  during 
the  year  to  a  sufficient  extent  to  make  it  worthy  for  them  to 
report.  Since  the  census  did  not  reach  the  great  mass  of  the 
transient  unemployed,  it  is  certain  that  this  figure  is  far  too 
small.  Moreover,  it  was  taken  in  a  year  of  what  is  commonly 
called  prosperity.  Had  it  been  taken  in  1895  or  1907  this  num¬ 
ber  would  certainly  have  been  doubled. 

It  is,  therefore,  far  within  the  limits  of  fact  when  we  say 


244 


that  in  any  average  year  there  are  at  least  four  million  able- 
bodied  workers,  whose  only  labor  is  that  most  nerve-racking 
toil  known  as  looking  for  work.  If  these  seekers  after  a  chance 
to  enjoy  what  the  Biblical  legend  tells  us  was  the  primal  curse 
laid  upon  man,  were  all  brought  in  one  place  they  would  make 
a  city  as  large  as  Greater  New  York.  If  they  brought  their 
families  with  them  they  could  populate  the  most  populous  state 
in  the  union  with  but  a  portion  of  their  numbers. 

In  the  opening  pages  of  this  work  we  discovered  that  those 
laborers  who  worked  for  corporations  with  a  million-dollar  out¬ 
put  or  more  per  year,  each  produced  a  little  over  four  thou¬ 
sand  dollars’  worth  of  goods  annually.  If  we  equip  each  one 
of  these  four  million  unemployed  with  equally  good  machinery, 
and  we  certainly  have  a  right  to  assume  that  under  the  social 
management  of  industries  they  would  be  so  equipped,  then 
they  would  have  produced  sixteen  billion  dollars’  worth  of  goods 
last  year. 

(h)  THE  WASTE  OF  HUMAN  LIFE. 

At  the  national  conservation  congress  held  in  1912  at  Indian¬ 
apolis,  Prof.  Irving  Fisher,  of  Yale  University,  said: 

“Out  of  some  one  and  one-half  million  deaths  annually  in  the 
United  States  at  least  630,000  are  preventable.  That  means 
more  than  seventeen  hundred  unnecessary  deaths  a  day,  or 
more  than  the  lives  lost  in  the  great  Titanic  disaster.  The 
Titanic  disaster  spread  a  pall  of  gloom  over  the  whole  world, 
while  the  daily  death  rate  rarely  gets  a  passing  comment.” 

Our  present  system  balances  the  dollar  against  the  death 
rate  and  the  dollar  wins.  So  there  are  630,000  unnecessary  deaths 
each  year.  If  we  figure  that  the  greatest  care  would  have 
extended  these  lives  an  average  of  ten  years  each  (a  period 
which  I  shall  presently  show  is  a  ridiculously  small  time),  we 
have  to  deal  with  a  reduction  of  6,300,000  in  our  population. 
Add  this  to  the  3,000,000  children  whose  lives  are  snuffed  out 
every  ten  years  and  we  have  9,000;000  people  whom  ten  years 
of  giving  the  death  rate  a  chance  against  the  dollar  would  add 
to  our  population. 

A  little  calculation  will  show  that  if  these  9,000,000  people 
were  to  produce  as  much  as  even  the  least  efficient  among  the 
manufacturing  or  farming  population  they  would  add  some 
$18,000,000,000  annually  to  the  wealth  of  this  country. 

(i)  EXTENDING  AVERAGE  PRODUCTIVE  LIFE  20 

YEARS. 

Whenever  the  workers  succeed  in  fighting  back  the  effects 
of  the  present  system  the  results  are  quickly  shown  in  an 
increased  length  of  life. 

This  is  most  vividly  set  out  in  some  facts  presented  in  a 
report  to  the  1912  convention  of  the  Cigar  Makers’  International 
Union.  Here  is  a  trade  that  a  little  over  twenty  years  ago  was 
one  of  the  most  unhealthful.  The  hours  were  long,  the  work¬ 
shops  located  in  cellars  and  basements  and  back  rooms  of 
cigar  stores,  unventilated,  the  air  filled  with  dust,  which,  with 
the  workers’  bent  position  and  lack  of  exercise,  all  invited  the 
scourge  of  tuberculosis. 

This  union  early  established  an  extensive  sick  and  death 
benefit  fund,  which  enables  it  to  give  accurate,  detailed,  vital  sta¬ 
tistics  of  its  members. 

The  union  was  one  of  the  first  to  secure  the  eight-hour  day, 
and  in  1888,  two  years  after  the  work  day  had  been  shortened 
to  eight  hours,  51  per  cent  of  the  deaths  of  the  members  were 
from  tuberculosis.  In  1911,  although  the  general  rate  from 
tuberculosis  was  rising,  only  20.1  per  cent  were  due  to  the 
same  cause. 

As  the  union  grew  stronger  conditions  throughout  the  trade 


245 


were  improved.  Wages  were  increased,  work  shops  were  cleaned 
up  and  made  more  sanitary.  Shortened  hours  gave  an  oppor¬ 
tunity  for  leisure.  An  increased  income  gave  better  food, 
although  it  must  at  once  be  recognized  that  even  at  the  pres¬ 
ent  time  the  wages  of  a  cigar  maker  are  scarcely  sufficient  to 
maintain  a  family  in  any  degree  of  comfort. 

But  what  this  gain  means,  as  expressed  in  terms  of  life,  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  in  1888  the  average  length  of  lives  of 
the  members  who  died  was  thirty-one  years,  four  months  and 
twenty  days.  In  1900  this  had  been  extended  to  forty-three 
years  and  six  months,  and  in  1911  to  fifty  years  and  one  month. 
Almost  twenty  years  has,  therefore,  been  added  to  the  average 
life  of  the  members  of  a  single  trade  during  a  period  of  twenty- 
three  years. 

If  at  present  the  productive  period  of  labor  averages  about 
twenty  years,  and  this  accords  with  the  facts  as  gathered  by  the 
statisticians  employed  by  the  defenders  of  the  present  society, 
then,  if  by  so  little  of  improvement  as  is  possible  to  a  modern 
trade  union  these  productive  years  can  be  doubled,  then  by  that 
familiar  mathematical  formula  of  our  childhood  that  “two  and 
two  makes  four”  we  know  that  proper  care  for  health  would 
double  our  present  productive  capacity. 

Shall  we  say  that  this  amounts  to  at  least  $10,000,000,000  a 
year?  You  will  notice  that  I  am  throwing  in  some  $10,000,- 
000,000  for  good  measure,  and  saying  nothing  about  the  expenses 
of  medical  care,  nursing  and  of  those  last  sad  rites  whose  ex¬ 
pense  is  so  often  a  harrowing  addition  to  the  sorrow  of  those 
who  mourn  the  dead  among  the  poor. 

(j)  SUMMARY  OF  WASTED  WEALTH. 


Using  imperfect  machinery . ?  3,000,000,000 

Twenty-five  per  cent  of  factories  idle,  could  produce  5,000,000,000 

Waste  of  coke  ovens .  50,000,000 

Restriction  on  patents . 2,000,000,000 

Manufacture  of  useless  and  harmful  articles .  1,000,000,000 

Imperfect  methods  in  agriculture .  18,000,000,000 

Maintenance  of  fences .  1,250,000,000 

Lands  used  for  horses . 1,000,000,000 

Multiplied  production  through  application  of  power  27,000,000,000 

Bad  roads  .  1,000,000,000 

Marketing  farm  products .  4,500,000,000 

Advertising  .  2,000,000,000 

Fire  and  insurance  (unnecessary) .  500,000,000 

Military  and  naval  expenditures . ; .  600,000,00® 

Unemployed  .  8,000,000,000 

Individual  kitchens  and  housekeeping  plants .  1,728,000,000 

Possible  production  of  9,000,000  people  needlessly 

killed  .  18,000,000,000 

Sickness,  exclusive  of  nursing  by  families .  1,000,000,000 

Extending  average  productive  life  20  years .  10,000,000,000 


Total  . . |105, 628, 000, 000 


The  total  annual  production  at  the  present  time  is  some¬ 
where  between  twenty  and  thirty  billion  dollars,  of  which 
labor,  including  farm  owners,  receives  about  one-half. 


(k)  MINERAL  WASTE  $1,000,000  A  DAY. 

That  Mr.  Simons  has  by  no  means  exhausted  the  enumera¬ 
tion  of  the  sources  of  waste  can  be  seen  by  the  fact  that  he 
makes  hardly  any  mention  of  the  mineral  waste  in  the  United 
States  which  is  estimated  by  the  Bureau  of  Mines  at  $1,000,000 
a  day. 


246 


7.  Commercial  Failures  in  U.  S. 

(World  Almanac, 

1914.) 

No.  of 

No.  of  business 

Pet. 

of 

Amt.  of 

Average 

Year. 

failures. 

concerns. 

failures. 

liabilities. 

liabilities. 

1880.  .  .  . 

746,823 

.63 

$  65,572,000 

113, 88C 

1881. . . . 

781,689 

.71 

81,155,932 

14,530 

1882.  .  .  . 

822,256 

.82 

101,547,564 

15,070 

1883.  . .  . 

.  9,184 

863,993 

1.06 

172,874,172 

18,823 

1884.  .  . . 

904,759 

1.21 

226,343,427 

20,632 

1885. . . . 

919,990 

1.16 

124,220,321 

11,673 

1886. . . . 

969,841 

1.01 

114,644,119 

11,651 

1887. . . . 

.  9,634 

994,281 

.09 

167,560,944 

17,392 

1888. . . . 

1,046,662 

1.02 

123,829,973 

11,596 

1889. . . . 

1,051,140 

1.04 

148,784,337 

13,672 

1890 _ 

1,110,590 

.98 

189,856,964 

17,405 

1891 _ 

. 12,273 

1,142,951 

1.07 

189/868,638 

15,471 

1892. . . . 

. 10,344 

1,172,705 

.88 

114,044,167 

11,025 

1893.. .. 

1,193,113 

1.28 

346,779,889 

22,751 

1894. . . . 

1,114,174 

1.25 

172,992,856 

12,458 

1895. . . . 

. 13,197 

1,209,282 

1.09 

173,196,060 

13,124 

1896. . . . 

. 15,088 

1,151,179 

1.31 

226,096,834 

14,992 

1897 . 

. 13,351 

1,058,521 

1.26 

154,332,071 

11,559 

1898 _ 

1,105,830 

1.10 

130,662,899 

10,722  ' 

1899 _ 

.  9,337 

1,147,595 

.81 

99,879,889 

9,733 

1900. . .  . 

. 10,774 

1,174,300 

.92 

138,495,673 

12,854 

1901. .  .  . 

1,219,242 

.90 

113,092,376 

10,271 

1902.  .  .  . 

. 11,615 

1,253,172 

.93 

117,476,769 

10,114 

1903 - 

. 12,069 

1,281,481 

.94 

155,444,185 

12,879 

1904 _ 

1,320,172 

.92 

144,202,311 

11,820 

1905. . . . 

. 11,520 

1,356,217 

.85 

102,676,172 

8,912 

1906 _ 

. 10,682 

1,391,587 

.77 

119,201,515 

11,159 

1907. . . . 

. 11,725 

1,417,077 

.82 

197,385,225 

16,834 

1908. . . . 

. 15,690 

222,315,684 

1909 . 

. 12,924 

154, 603, 465 

1910 _ 

. 12,652 

201,757*097 

1911 _ 

. 13,241 

186*498, 823 

1912 . 

_ 15,452 

203*117’391 

1913 . 

. 15,632 

250*802*536 

8.  Underfeeding. 

(From  The  Standard  of  Living  Among  Workingmen’s  Families 
in  New  York  City,  by  Robert  Chapin,  quoted  by  Louise 
Stevens  Bryant  in  School  Feeding.  Published  by 
J.  B.  Lippincott  Company.) 

(a)  RELATION  BETWEEN  INCOME  AND  UNDER¬ 
FEEDING  IN  AMERICAN  WORKINGMEN’S 
FAMILIES. 

Total  No.  Underfed 


of  Familieo. 

Annual  Income.  families.  Number  Per  cent. 

$400-1599 .  25  19  7C 

600-  799 .  151  48  22 

800-  899 .  73  16  22 

900-  1099 .  94  8  9 

1,100  and  over .  48  0  0 

Totals  .  391  91  23. 2 


The  figures  in  this  table  indicate  that  with  less  than  $600 
a  year  to  spend,  an  adequate  food  supply  is  not  provided  in 
three  families  out  of  four.  On  incomes  from  $600  to  $800,  one 
family  in  three  is  underfed,  while  less  than  one-tenth  of  the 
families  having  $900  to  $1,000  to  spend  fall  short  of  the  mini¬ 
mum  allowance  for  food.  The  income  of  $1,100  for  a  family  of 
five  is  apparently  a  safeguard  against  underfeeding. 

Underfed  School  Children. 

(From  Report  on  Underfed  School  Children  to  the  Chicago 
Board  of  Education,  1908.) 

Conditions  in  Chicago. 

Reports  from  truant  officers,  principals  and  teachers,  sup¬ 
plemented  by  visitations  of  homes  in  many  instances,  show 
that  there  is  an  average  of  4,664  underfed  children  attending  the 
schools  of  Chicago  who  are  habitually  hungry  from  lack  of 
nourishing  food.  Many  often  go  to  school  breakfastless,  or  with 
such  a  scant  morning  meal  of  dry  bread  or  crackers,  that  they} 
suffer  from  malnutrition,  and  lose  interest  in  study.  During 


247 


the  period  of  financial  depression  last  year,  the  County  Agent 
relieved  3,699  families,  averaging  three  children  each — a  total  of 
11,097  children,  who  would  otherwise  have  suffered  from  star¬ 
vation.  Of  these  families  880  were  deserted  women  and  2,819 
widows  \yho  were  struggling,  without  friends  or  relatives  who 
could  aid  them.  With  tfieSre  figures  and  the  canvas  made  by 
truant  officers  among  the  school,  social  settlements,  charity 
organizations  and  homes  as  a  basis,  I  estimated  the  total  number 
of  school  children  in  Chicago  whoedo  not  receive  three  square 
meals  daily  at  15,000.  Many  are  cared  for  by  charity  organiza¬ 
tions,  relatives,  church  societies,  etc.,  while  others,  from  pride, 
struggle  along  on  one  or  two  meals  per  day.  A  conservative 
estimate  of  the  number  of  child  victims  of  malnutrition  (who 
are  in  immediate  need  of  free  breakfast  service  and  who  would 
gratefully  accept  it)  is  5,000.  This  makes  allowance  for  a  few 
hundred  who  may  not  have  been  reported. 

(b)  OTHER  CITIES. 

(From  School  Feeding,  by  Louise  Stevens  Bryant,  pages  198- 
200.  Published  by  J.  B.  Lippincott  Company.) 

General  public  interest  in  school  feeding  began  with  the  pub¬ 
lication,  in  1904,  of  Robert  Hunter’s  book,  -‘Poverty.”  In  try¬ 
ing  to  give  some  estimate  of  the  amount  of  suffering  that  must 
exist  as  a  result  of  poverty,  Mr.  Hunter  made  the  statement 
that  there  must  be  “very  likely  sixty  or  seventy  thousand  chil¬ 
dren  in  New  York  City  alone  who  often  arrive  at  school  hun¬ 
gry  and  unfitted  to  do  well  the  work  assigned  to  them.”  This 
statement  has  received  more  publicity  than  any  other  one 
sentence  in  the  whole  book  and  it  was  all  too  often  translated 
by  the  newspapers  into  “70,000  starving  children  in  New  York 
City  come  breakfastless  to  school.”  As  a  result  many  so-called 
investigations  were  made  and  most  cdnflicting  reports  pub¬ 
lished  which  alternately  refuted,  corroborated  and  outdid  Hun¬ 
ter’s  original  statement. 

Shortly  after  the  publication  of  this  book,  John  Spargo  under¬ 
took  to  find  out  by  personal  investigation  the  real  facts  about 
underfed  children  in  New  York  City.  He  first  confined  his 
attention  to  the  subject  of  the  usual  breakfasts  eaten  by  school 
children.  He  was  able  with  the  cordial  co-operation  of  princi¬ 
pals  and  teachers  to  gather  fairly  reliable  information  in  regard 
to  the  breakfasts  of  12,800  children,  in  sixteen  different  schools. 

The  method  used  was  as  follows:  Each  child  was  questioned 
privately  by  the  class  teacher  as  to  what  he  had  for  breakfast 
that  day.  If  he  reported  no  breakfast,  the  fact  was  noted,  and 
also  if  he  reported  an  inadequate  breakfast.  For  this  investi¬ 
gation,  an  inadequate  breakfast  was  defined  as  one  not  contain¬ 
ing  any  of  the  following  articles:  Milk,  eggs,  meat,  fish,  cereal, 
butter,  jam  or  fruit;  it  further  meant  one  consisting  of  coffee 
or  tea,  either  alone  or  with  bread  or  cake  or  crackers.  Each 
teacher  reported  to  the  principal  the  number  of  children  with 
no  breakfast,  and  those  with  inadequate  breakfasts,  omitting  so 
far  as  possible  children  of  fairly  good  circumstances  whose  lack 
of  breakfast  was  accidental  or  unusual. 

The  inquiry  revealed  the  following  facts:  Of  12,800  children, 
987  or  nearly  8  per  cent,  had  no  breakfast;  1,963  others,  or 
over  15  per  cent,  had  inadequate  breakfasts.  This  made  a  total 
of  23  per  cent  of  all  the  children  in  those  schools  who  were 
badly  fed,  so  far  as  this  might  be  indicated  by  breakfasts  alone. 

Mr.  Spargo  then  tried  to  find  out  what  sort  of  lunches  the 
children  had.  He  was  assured  by  teachers  and  principals  and  by 
his  own  observation  that  many  children  did  not  go  home  at 
noon,  but  remained  playing  about  the  school  yard,  with  no 
lunch  at  all.  No  exact  figures  were  gathered  on  this  point. 
From  questioning,  by  the  teachers,  it  was  found  that  anywhere 
from  10  to  20  per  cent  of  the  children  were  given  pennies  to 


248 


buy  their  own  lunches.  He  watched  what  they  bought  and 
reports  this  special  illustration  as  a  fair  example  of  their  choice 
in  winter.  Fourteen  children,  eight  boys  and  six  girls,  in  one 
delicatessen  store,  bought,  seven  of  them  pickles  and  bread, 
four  of  them  pickles  alone,  two  of  them  bologna  and  rye  bread, 
and  one  pickled  fish  and  bread.  On  a  summer  day  he  saw  a 
group  of  nineteen  buy,  six  of  them  pickles,  two  of  them  pickle* 
and  bread,  six  ice  cream,  two  bananas,  and  three  candy.  Mr. 
Spargo  found  that  anothei*  way  the  lunch  pennies  go  is  in 
gambling,  especially  among  boys. 

In  1906,  Dr.  Lechstecker,  acting  for  the  New  York  State 
Board  of  Charities,  examined  10,707  children  in  the  12  Indus¬ 
trial  Schools  of  the  Children's  Aid  Society.  He  found  that  of 
these,  439  had  had  no  breakfast  or  coffee  alone  or  with  bread. 
These  children,  who  formed  13  per  cent  of  aft  examined,  showed 
marked  anaemia.  Dr.  Lechstecker  declared  that  he  found 
that  only  18  per  cent  of  all  children  had  started  the  day  witk 
what  he  considered  suitable  and  adequate  meals. 

In  Buffalo,  of  7,500  children  in  8  schools,  5,105  reported  a 
breakfast  of  tea  or  coffee  and  bread.  The  principals  in  these 
schools  asserted  that  there  were  1,150  or  15  per  cent  of  all 
examined,  who  were  obviously  handicapped  by  poor  nutrition. 
In  Philadelphia,  4,589  children  were  examined  and  189  reported 
no  breakfast,  and  2,504,  tea  or  coffee  and  bread,  making  a 
total  of  59  per  cent  coming  to  school  inadequately  fed. 

In  St.  Paul,  in  1910,  Dr.  Meyerding,  the  head  of  the  Medical 
Inspection,  made  a  special  examination  of  3,200  children  in 
schools  frankly  chosen  from  the  poorer  district.  He  found  that 
644  or  20  per  cent  of  the  whole  showed  marked  underfeeding. 

As  a  general  conclusion  from  these  investigations  it  seems 
fair  to  place  the  probable  number  of  seriously  underfed  school 
children  in  New  York  and  other  American  cities  at  10  per  cent 
of  the  school  population. 


9.  Illiteracy. 

(a)  ILLITERACY  IN  GENERAL. 

(12th  Census  of  U.  S.  “Population,”  Vol.  II,  page  xcviii.) 
Of  the  6,180,069  illiterate  persons  in  1900,  955,843,  or  15.5 
per  cent,  can  read  but  not  write,  and  5,224,2 26,  or  84.5  per  cent, 
can  neither  read  nor  write. 


P.  xcix.  The  population  10  years  of  age  and  over,  for  the 
mainland  of  the  United  States  in  1900,  numbers  57,949,824,  and 
of  this  number  6,180,069,  or  10.7  per  cent,  are  reported  as  illit¬ 
erate. 

P.  CXIII.  ILLITERACY  BY  AGE. 

Per  cent  of 


Number,  all  same 

10  to  14  years  .  577,649  7.1 

15  to  17  years  .  338,602  7.4 

18  to  20  years  .  382,792  8.5 

21  to  24  years  .  499,857  8.6 

25  to  34  years  . 1,103,478  9.1 

35  to  44  years  . 1,033,591  11.2 

45  to  54  years  .  943,607  14.7 

65  to  64  years  . 642,257  16 

65  and  over  .  611,446  19.8 

Age  unknown  .  46,790  23.3 

P.  413.  Off  the  6,246,857  illiterate  .persons  in  1900— 
4,882,497  were  native  born. 

1,364,360  were  foreign  born. 


(b)  SCHOOL  ATTENDANCE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


Look  over  the  following  table  and  see  what  capitalism 
gives  us.  Over  four  million  children  of  school  age  who 
never  go  to  school  at  all.  Then  see  how  small  a  proportion 
reach  the  higher  educational  institutions,  and  think  of  the 
vast  number  who  must  plod  along  through  life  deprived  of 
that  great  advantage,  and  are  compelled  to  suffer  the  privation. 

The  number  of  children  of  school  age  in  the  United  States 
is  23,792,723. 


249 


Enrolled  in  all  public  and  private  elementary  and  secondary 
schools,  18,155,557  (76  per  cent). 

Completing  elementary  course,  4,400,000  (18  per  cent). 
Entering  high  schools,  3,001,616  (12.6  per  cent). 

8  Completing  high  school  course,  819,696  (3.4  per  cent). 
Entering  college,  438,080  (1.84  per  cent). 

Completing  college  course,  160,000  (.67  per  cent). 

— Authority,  Professor  Kenneth  G.  Smith,  University  Exten¬ 
sion  Division,  University  of  Wisconsin. 

10.  Disease  and  Death. 

(a)  DEPLORABLE  CONDITION  OF  HEALTH  AMONG 
SCHOOL  CHILDREN. 

An  exhaustive  investigation  has  been  made  into  the  health 
of  pupils  in  the  public  schools,  not  only  in  the  large  cities,  but 
also  in  rural  districts,  and  in  all  parts  of  the  country.  Dr. 
Thomas  H.  Wood,  Professor  of  Physical  Education  in  the 
Teachers’  College  of  Columbia  University,  sums  up  the  find¬ 
ings  as  follows: 

Out  of  the  20,000,000  school  children  in  the  United  States — 
A  million  have  flatfoot,  spinal  curvature,  or  other  moderate 
deformities  serious  enough  to  interfere  in  some  degree  with 
health; 

A  million  have  defective  hearing; 

Five  million  have  defects  of  vision; 

Six  million  have  adenoids  or  enlarged  tonsils  or  cervical 
glands  needing  attention; 

Ten  million  have  defective  teeth  interfering  with  general 
health; 

Five  million  suffer  from  malnutrition,  in  many  cases  due 
wholly  or  in  part  to  some  of  the  foregoing  defects. 

Many  children  suffer  from  two  or  more  of  the  troubles 
named.  In  all,  15,000,000  children,  three-fourths  of  the  whole 
number,  are  in  need  of  attention  for  physical  defects  which 
impair  their  present  learning  capacity  and  which  are  likely 
to  develop  into  grave  chronic  afflictions  or  to  render  them  ab¬ 
normally  susceptible  to  dangerous  diseases  in  later  years. 

In  a  large  proportion  of  the  cases,  these  defects  could  have 
been  avoided  .by  proper  precautions.  In  another  very  large 
proportion,  they  can  be  cured  by  proper  attention.  Every  year 
that  attention  is  delayed  reduces  the  chance  of  cure  and  in¬ 
creases  the  lifelong  impairment  of  vitality. 

(b)  CAUSE  OF  HIGH  INFANT  MORTALITY. 

(Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform  (1910),  page  620.) 

Infant  mortality  in  most  countries  seems  upon  the  increase 
even  .where  the  general  death-rate  is  falling.  This  is  the  con¬ 
clusion  arrived  at,  among  others,  by  Dr.  George  Newman,  in 
his  book  “Infant  Mortality”  (1907).  He  gives  the  following 
table,  which  shows  both  the  enormous  death  rate  for  infants 
compared  with  the  general  death  rate,  and  also  for  almost  all 
countries  an  increase  in  the  rate. 

INFANT  MORTALITY  RATE. 

General 

death  rate.  Infant  death  rate. 
1893-1902.  1883-1892. 1893-1902.  1903 


England  and  Wales  . 

_  17.6 

144 

152 

132 

Scotland  . 

.  . .  .  18 

120 

127 

.  . . 

Denmark  . 

_  16.5 

132 

133 

.  . . 

Russia  . 

_  32.9 

270 

272 

Germany . 

_  21.5 

195 

Prussia  . 

_  21.2 

207 

199 

194 

Austria  . 

_  25.9 

227 

Hungary  . 

_  26.3 

224 

2ii 

Netherlands  . 

_  18.5 

176 

152 

135 

Belgium  . 

_  18.3 

161 

157 

155 

France  . 

_  20.8 

167 

158 

Spain  . 

_  28.7 

190 

Switzerland  . 

_  18.5 

i60 

145 

iss 

Italy  . 

_  23.3 

209 

173 

Chile  . 

_  29.8 

297 

333 

352 

250 


The  causes  of  infant  mortality  and  of  its  increase  are  un¬ 
doubtedly  involved,  but  Dr.  Newman  finds  them  largely  ante¬ 
natal.  From  his  studies  in  Great  Britain  he  concludes  that  30 
per  cent  of  the  deaths  are  due  to  premature  birth.  This  and 
other  antenatal  causes  he  finds  largely  due  to  economic  causes 
in  the  increased  stress  of  modern  life,  and  particularly  to  the 
increase  of  woman’s  work.  Recent  German  medical  investi¬ 
gations, ..have  also  shown  the  intimate  connection  between  high 
infant  mortality  and  woman’s  work,  particularly  in  mills,  work¬ 
ing  often  during  advanced  pregnancy  and  too  soon  after  birth. 
Unhealthy  and  overcrowded  housing  among  the  poorer  classes 
is  another  fatal  cause.  Dr.  Newman  shows  this  by  the  follow¬ 
ing  table. 

Infant  mortality  from  all  causes  in  houses  or  tenements  of 
different  sizes  at  the  metropolitan  borough  of  Finsbury,  Lon¬ 
don,  1905: 


Census  popu- 

No.  of 

No.  of  in 

Size  of  tenement,  lation,  1901. 

births. 

fant  deatl 

One  room  . 

.  14,516 

532 

117 

Two  rooms  .... 

.  31,482 

1,216 

192 

Three  rooms  .  . . 

468 

66 

Pour  rooms  and 

over  33,185 

464 

46 

Institutions,  deaths 

and  births 

not 

traced  . 

-  1,000 

206 

8 

The  borough  . . . 

.  101,463 

2,886 

429 

Infant  mor¬ 
tality  per 
1,000  birthi 
219 
157 
141 
99 


39 

148 


Mr.  B.  Seebohn  Rowntree  found  the  same  in  New  York  in 
his  investigations  in  1898,  as  is  seen  by  the  following: 

(“Poverty,  a  Study  of  Town  Life,”  1901.) 


Area. 

Area  1,  poorest  working  class 
Area  2,  middle  working  class 
Area  3,  highest  working  class 

Servant-keeping  class  . 

City  of  New  York  as  whole.  . 


Infant 

Death-rat* 

mortality 

General 

over  5  years 

rate. 

death  rate. 

of  age. 

.  247 

27.7 

13.8 

.  184 

20.7 

10.2 

.  173 

13.4 

7.5 

94 

.  176 

18.5 

11.1 

Infant  Mortality. — Of  the  196,534  deaths  of  children  under 
five  which  occurred  in  1910,  52,5J6  occurred  before  the  age  of 
two  years  ,and  were  due  to  diarrhoea  and  enteritis.  It  is  known 


that  from  80  per  cent  to  90  per  cent  of  all  infants  dying  from1 
gastrointestinal  diseases  were  bottle  fed. — American  Year  Book 
for  1911,  page  411,  Comment  on  Poisoned  Milk. 

Dr.  L.  Emmett  Holt,  the  great  specialist  of  New  York,  in 
the  “Journal  of  the  American  Medical  Association,”  for  Feb¬ 
ruary  26,  1910,  says: 

“All  who  practice  medicine  among  children  and  who  study 
the  question  -of  infant  mortality  statistically  are  struck  with  the 
marked  contrast  between  the  death  rate  of  the  children  of  the 
poor  and  those  of  the  rich.  Clay  estimates  that  in  England  in 
the  aristocratic  families  the  mortality  of  the  first  year  '  is  10 
per  cent;  in  the  middle  classes  21  per  cent,  and  in  the  laboring 
class  32  per  cent.” 

Similar  conditions  prevail  in  New  York.  Thus  a  recent  study 
of  the  New  York  Health  Department  records  for  two  typical 
summer  weeks  showed  remarkable  facts:  (1)  that  in  28  fash¬ 
ionable  blocks  with  a  population  of  7,561  people  no  babies  died 
during  the  last  two  weeks  of  July,  1907;  (2)  that  in  five  fairly 
•well-to-do  blocks  with  a  population  of  7,696  no  babies  died  dur¬ 
ing  the  same  period;  (3)  that  in  three  tenement  blocks  with  a 
population  of  7,858  sixteen  babies  died  during  this  same  period. 


11:  Panics. 

About  once  every  ten  years  the  capitalist  system  has  broken 
down.  Panics,  crises  and  periods  of  depression  have  come  in 
which  the  whole  industrial  system  is  thrown  out  of  gear,  banks 
fail,  factories  close,  mines  shut  down,  the  workingmen  by  the 
thousands  are  thrown  out  of  work,  poverty,  distress  and  meas¬ 
ureless  suffering  prevails  throughout  society. 


251 


1720.  The  first  crisis  of  the  modern  type  occurred  over  the 
speculative  plans  of  John  Law  in  forming  his  Mississippi  Com¬ 
pany.  His  company  possessed,  in  1719,  over  21  ships  and  nearly 
$1,000,000.  Shares  went  up  many  times  their  value.  Specula- 
:ion  developed  like  a  fever  in  France  and  England.  About  the 
same  time,  too,  the  South  Sea  Bubble  was  developed  in  Eng- 
and. 

1783-93-95.  Panics  occurred  in  connection  with  the  Ameri- 
;an  and  French  wars. 

1815.  There  was  a  severe  crisis  at  the  close  of  the  Napole¬ 
onic  wars.  After  the  peace  England  undertook  to  flood  Europe 
with  manufactures,  but  there  was  OVERPRODUCTION  and 
i  crisis. 

1825. 4  There  was  another  crisis,  which  affected  America  also. 

1837.  There  was  a  most  severe  crisis  in  the  United  States, 
renewed  in  1839,  when  959  banks  stopped  payment.  There  were 
33,000  failures,  with  an  aggregate  loss  of  $440,000,000. 

1847.  The  crisis  affected  England  more,  being  occasioned  by 
:he  failure  of  the  potato  crop  of  1846. 

1857.  The  crisis  began  in  America,  but  affected  England 
ind  all  Europe  more  severely. 

1866.  The  crisis  was  mainly  in  England,  once  more  causing 
i  suspension  of  the  Bank  Act,  and  was  marked  by  the  memor¬ 
able  “Black  Friday,”  and  by  the  failure  of  the  most  historic 
louse  of  Overend,  Gurney  &  Co.  The  23d  of  September,  1869, 
>aw  a  “Black  Friday”  in  New  York,  but  it  was  mainly  local  and 
connected  with  gold  speculation. 

1873.  The  general  prosperity  of  the  United  States  seemed 
undiminished,  but  on  September  18,  1873,  the  most  extraordinary 
lanic  began  which  this  country  has  ever  witnessed,  and  reached 
ts  height  about  the  middle  of  October.  It  prostrated  thousands 
of  commercial  houses,  cut  'off  the  wages  of  hundreds  of  thou¬ 
sands  of  workmen  and  overthrew  the  Stock  Exchange.  It 
swept  down  the  entire  banking  system  of  the  country.  Even 
savings  banks  closed  their  doors.  It  broke  off  the  negotiation 
of  American  securities  in  Europe,  and  prostrated  business  in 
ivery  way. 

1884.  Another  crisis  occurred,  though  of  less  serious  char¬ 
acter,  and  depression  prevailed  through  strikes  and  industrial 
troubles,  which  continued  until  1886. 

1890.  The  crisis  followed  the  period  of  depression  from  1888. 
Prominent  English  houses  which  had  invested  in  Argentine 
Republican  and  African  securities  were  disturbed,  and  finally  on 
December  15th  even  the  great  house  of  Baring  Bros,  suspended. 
In  France  the  great  coffee  syndicate  failed.  *  *  * 

i  It  affected  the  United  States  almost  as  much,  though  not  so 
much  in  the  form  of  a  crisis  as  of  adding  to  depression,  con¬ 
tinually  without  much  improvement  to  the  crisis  of  1893. 

1893.  Crisis  was  different  in  many  ways  from  all  other 
crises.  It  was  only  very  slightly  due  to  overspeculation,  almost 
.purely  of  monetary  conditions,  yet  it  affected  not  only  financial 
fircles  but  industry  all  over  the  United  States.  *  *  * 

i  The  mines  of  Colorado  and  other  silver  states  were  at  once 
stopped,  and  their  workmen  left  unemployed.  There  was  a 
panic.  Western  and  Southern  banks  began  to  fail.  Hoarding 
set  in,  even  in  the  East.  Currency  became  scarce.  Many  manu¬ 
factories  shut  down.  Wealthy  men  with  unquestioned  credit 
:ould  not  get  checks  cashed.  All  the  banking  centers  except 
Chicago  began  to  have  recourse  to  clearing-house  certificates. 
There  was  a  money  dearth.  *  *  * 

Of  the  301  bank  suspensions  from  May  1st  to  July  22d  93  per 
cent  were  in  the  South  and  West.  Yet  the  business  failures 
from  April  1st  to  October  1st  were  8,105,  against  4,171  for  those 
months  in  1892,  with  liabilities  of  $284,663,624,  against  $41,110,- 


252 


322  for  1892.  Thus  the  number  of  failures  had  doubled  and  the 
liabilities  had  increased  nearly  seven  fold.  Three  great  railway 
systems  were  sent  into  the  hands  of  receivers:  the  Northern 
Pacific,  the  Union  Pacific  and  the  Erie. 

12.  Crimes,  Insanity  and  Suicides. 

(a)  CRIME. 

Extent  of  Crime  in  the  United  States. — Nothing  has  been 
done  by  the  government  as  yet  to  treat  the  subject  of  crime 
scientifically,  although  an  editorial  in  the  “American  Lawyer” 
of  New  York  says  that  $600,000,000  is  the  annual  tribute  which 
society  pays  to  crime  in  the  United  States.  This  probably  in¬ 
cludes  the  cost  of  the  judicial  department,  together  with  the 
cost  of  operating  of  police  and  penitentiaries  and  the  houses 
of  correction. 

Number  of  prisoners  confined  in  prisons  and  jails,  January. 

1912  . .113,57* 

Number  committed  to  prisons  or  jails  during-  the  year  1910.  .479,761 

The  government  report  for  1904,  based  upon  cities  with  a 
population  of  more  than  8,000,  states  the  number  of  arrests  for 
the  year  to  be  1,386,784.  There  were  150,000  sentenced  to  im¬ 
prisonment.  This  does  not  include  sentences  to  the  bridewell 
or  workhouse. 

Cost  of  Crime. — There  are  no  government  statistics  esti¬ 
mating  the  entire  cost  of  the  criminal  class  in  the  United  States. 
We  therefore  take  as  a  basis  the  crime  cost  in  the  State  of 
Massachusetts  for  1908,  which  was  $1,156,000,  or  21  per  cent 
of  the  state  tax;  to  this  should  be  added  county  and  city  ex¬ 
penses.  The  only  single  expenditure  equaling  the  expense  for 
crime  was  the  expenditure  for  education.  We  emphasize  the 
fact  that  this  expense  does  not  include  the  expenditure  of  dif¬ 
ferent  cities,  but  only  that  of  the  state.  For  instance,  the  city 
of  Boston  paid  for  police  $1,143,847;  for  the  courts,  $300,000, 
for  reform  school,  $280,067.  To  this  should  be  added  the  local 
crime  expense  of  $415,453,  which  makes  the  total  cost  of  crime 
paid  by  the  city  of  Boston,  $3,039,667.  At  the  tax  rate  for  1908, 
which  was  $10.50,  more  than  one-eighth  was  spent  on  account 
of  crime.  Warren  F.  Spaulding,  secretary  of  the  Massachusetts 
Prison  Association,  says: 

The  cost  of  housing  our  criminals  is  a  very  large  one.  The 
official  valuation  of  state  property  so  used  in  Massachusetts  is 
$4,933,163.  The  state  penitentiary  houses  795  prisoners,  in  an 
institution  valued  at  $1,232,500,  including  shops  and  houses  for 
some  offices — an  average  of  $1,550  per  inmate.  The  Massa¬ 
chusetts  Reformatory  is  valued  at  $1,381,498.37.  Its  929  in¬ 
mates  were  cared  for  at  a  cost  of  $1,487  per  capita.  The  Re¬ 
formatory  Prison  for  Women  had  buildings  and  equipment 
valued  at  $493,705,  an  average  of  $2,887  for  each  of  its  171  pris¬ 
oners.  (It  was  built  for  a  much  larger  number,  and  if  it  were 
full,  the  per  capita  would  be  much  lower.) 

The  total  valuation  of  all  the  county  prisons  is  nearly  $7,- 
000,000,  excluding  furnishings;  that  of  the  state  penal  and 
reformatory  institutions  nearly  $5,000,000.  That  is,  the  tax¬ 
payers  are  maintaining  their  prisoners  in  institutions  which  have 
cost  nearly  $12,000,000  in  cash  actually  paid  out — a  real  estate 
investment  made  for  them  by  the  authorities,  which  yields  no 
income  whatever,  but  is  a  constant  expense  for  maintenance, 
repairs,  etc.  To  this  must  be  added  the  cost  of  police  stations, 
court  houses,  etc.,  used  for  arrested  criminals  in  process  of  con¬ 
viction — another  enormous  investment  of  the  money  of  the 
taxpayers. 

The  figures  which  have  been  given  are  not  guesses  or  esti¬ 
mates.  They  are  from  official  reports,  and,  as  has  been  said, 


253 


they  are  far  below  the  actual  cost  of  crime — even  the  direct 
cost,  to  say  nothing  of  the  indirect  expense.  The  Massachu¬ 
setts  expense  is  larger  than  it  is  in  some  other  states.  The 
number  of  arrests  is  larger,  because  the  standard  is  higher,  and 
thousands  are  taken  into  custody,  in  the  interest  of  public  order, 
who  would  not  be  arrested  elsewhere. 

The  crime  cost  of  Massachusetts  may  or  may  not  be  a  sound 
basis  for  an  estimate  of  that  of  other  states,  but  one  cannot  be 
far  from  the  truth  if  he  estimates  that  ten  per  cent  of  all  the 
money  raised  by  taxation  in  this  country  is  spent  upon  criminals. 

There  are  other  items  which  also  enter  into  the  cost  of  crime, 
and  of  which  no  mention  has  been  made,  such  as  the  loss  of 
wages,  on  account  of  acting  as  witnesses,  the  actual  amount 
of  which  we  know  is  several  millions  of  dollars. 

Using  the  figures  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts  as  a  basis 
for  the  entire  country,  the  total  cost  would  be  as  follows: 


Total  cost  in  Massachusetts  (1908) .  $6,671,222  00 

Est.  population  Massachusetts  (1908) .  3,145,048 

Cost  per  capita  .  $2.09 

Population  of  United  States  (1910) .  91,972,26$ 

Total  cost  of  crime  in  United  States . $192,222,035.94 


Intemperance  and  Crime. — According  to  the  Massachusetts 
report  of  the  Board  of  Prison  Commissioners,  you  cannot 
attribute  crime  to  intemperance,  as  their  report  shows  that  of 
those  committed  during  the  year  1910  to  the  state  prison  and 
reformatory,  there  were  (males)  191  intemperate  and  589 
temperate. 

Statistics  Concerning  Crime. — The  United  States  Census 
Report  of  1904  classifies  the  per  cent  distribution,  by  previous 
occupations,  of  male  prisoners  committed  during  1904  as  fol¬ 
lows: 


All  occupations  . 100.0 

Professional  . ^9 

Clerical  and  official  . 2.1 

Mercantile  and  trading-  .  2.6 

Public  entertainment  . . .  *  *7 

Personal  service,  police  and  military . 1.8 

Laboring  and  servant  . ....’.  50)1 

Manufacturing  and  mechanical  industry . .  . . .  23.7 

Agriculture,  transportation  and  other  out  door .  17.2 

All  other  occupations  . .9 

The  literacy  of  prisoners  committed  during  1904,  as  follows: 

Literate  . 83.0  per  cent 

Illiterate  . 12.6  per  cent 

Can  read  but  not  write .  1.1  per  cent 

Can  neither  read  nor  write . 11.5  per  cent 

Literacy  not  stated  . 4.3  per  cent 


The  Census  further  shows  that  the  number  of  foreign  born 
prisoners  is  23.7  per  cent  against  76.3  per  cent  of  native  born, 
and  these  percentages  give  little  support  to  the  popular  belief 
that  the  foreign  born  contribute  to  the  prison  class  greatly  in 
excess  of  their  representation  in  the  general  population. 

The  distribution  by  closes  of  offenses  of  prisoners  enumer¬ 
ated  in. 1904  Census: 


Against  society  . .  . 
Against  the  person 
Against  property  . 
Double  crimes 

Unclassified  . 

Offense  not  stated 


21.7  per  cent 

31.8  per  cent 
45.5  per  cent 

.2  -per  cent 
.2  per  cent 
.7  per  cent 


Crime  Increasing. 

(From  the  St.  Louis  Post  Dispatch,  quoted  in  The  Southern 
Light,  Shreveport,  La.,  December  20,  1913.) 

“In  relation  to  the  increase  of  population  there  are  two  and 
one-half  times  as  many  persons  in  the  prisons  of  the  United 
States  as  there  were  50  years  ago,  figured  on  a  per  capita  basis. 
Yet  in  Great  Britain  there  has  been  nearly  a  50  per  cent  de- 


254 


t 


crease  in  the  same  time,  although  there  has  been  a  50  per  cent 
increase  in  population.” 

These  figures  have  to  do  only  with  persons  actually  con¬ 
victed.  and  punished  for  crime.  H.  C.  Weir,  an  investigator  of 
note,  in  an  article  printed  in  the  Literary  Digest,  February  12, 
1910,  declared  that  there  are  annually  in  the  United  States  250,- 
000  members  whom  the  law  never  touches. 

Bad  as  that  is,  it  is  not  the  worst  economic  feature  of  the 
situation.  The  late  J.  P.  Altgeld,  governor  of  Illinois,  estimated 
in  an  address  that  in  addition  to  the  regular  police  and  detec¬ 
tives  there  are  about  70,000  constables,  70,000  magistrates,  12,000 
deputy  sheriffs  and  2,000  sheriffs  who,  together  with  the  grand 
jurors,  petit  jurors,  judges,  clerks,  lawyers,  jailers,  wardens, 
guards,  prison  attendants,  etc.,  make  up  a  conservative  estimate 
of  1,000,000  persons  who  derive  an  average  annual  income  of 
about  $1,500  each,  out  of  the  apprehension,  conviction  and  de¬ 
tention  of  criminals.  The  estimated  tota'l  number  of  regular 
policemen  in  the  United  States  is  300,000.  At  an  average  $1,000 
salary  the  average  annual  payroll  for  policemen  is  $300,000,000. 

Adding  to  this  mighty  army  the  132,857  prisoners  in  this 
country,  we  have  a  force  of  1,132,857  men.  Beside  such  a  force 
the  mightiest  armies  of  history,  the  combatants  in  any  of  the 
world’s  greatest  battles,  from  Crecy  to  the  fall  of  Adrianople, 
would  be  a  pitiful  corporal’s  guard  in  comparison. 

(b)  SUICIDES  AND  INSANITY. 

-cording  to  various  authorities,  crime  and  insanity  annu¬ 
ally  prevail  in  the  United  States  as  follows: 


Homicides  .and  murders  . 10,774 

Suicides  .  15,000 

Insane  . 139,000 


13.  Prostitution  and  White  Slavery. 


(a)  EXTENT  OF— IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

The  Extent  of  Prostitution  in  the  U.  S. — (Encyclopedia  of 
Social  Reform — Bliss.) — At  the  National  Purity  Congress  in 
Baltimore  (Oct.,  1895)  it  was  stated  that  the  number  of  prosti¬ 
tutes  in  the  United  States  was  over  230,000,  and  that  this  im¬ 
plied  at  least  1,150,000  prostitute  men,  which  is  probably  far 
under  the  truth.  Mrs.  Kate  R.  O’Hare,  a  rescue  mission  worker 
of  many  years’  experience,  estimates  (“The  Worker,”  May  26, 
1906)  600,000  public  prostitutes  in  the  U.  S.,  and  possibly  as  many 
more  who  sacrifice  their  chastity  in  connection  with  some  other 
means  of  livelihood. 

Extent  in  New  York  City. — In  a  paper  prepared  for  the 
World’s  Congress  on  Social  Purity,  held  in  Chicago  in  June, 
1893,  Hon.  Elbridge  T.  Gerry  states  that  Superintendent  Byrnes, 
of  the  police  department,  and  himself  prepared  notes  with 
exactly  the  same  results,  and,  viewing  the  matter  from  two 
different  standpoints,  they  were  agreed  that  the  number  of 
prostitutes  at  that  time  in  New  York  City  was  at  least  40,000. 

Extent  in  Chicago. — The  Vice  Commission  of  Chicago,  in 
its  report,  estimates  that  there  are  approximately  5,000  profes¬ 
sional  prostitutes  in  that  city  who  do  nothing  else  for  a  living. 
(The  Social  Evil  in  Chicago,  p.  34.) 

The  same  report  estimates  that  the  gross  revenues  from  the 
social  evil  in  that  city  amount  to  $20,000,000  per  year. 

Summary  of  Annual  Profits  from  the  Business  of  Prostitution 
in  the  City  of  Chicago. 

(Chicago  Vice  Commission  Report — 1911,  p.  113.) 

Rentals  of  property  and  profits  to  keepers  and  inmates.  .  $  8,467,689 

Sale  of  liquor,  disorderly  saloons  only .  4,307,000 

Sale  of  liquor  in  houses  and  flats,  and  profits  of  inmates  „ 

on  commissions  .  2,915,760 


Total  . $15,699,449 

Gross  revenues  from  prostitution  in  Chicagfo,  1906,  $20,000,000 
Number  of  professional  prostitutes,  10,000. 


r  :  " 

255 

(b)  PROSTITUTION  AN  ECONOMIC  PROBLEM. 

(Twentieth  Century  Socialism — Edmund  Kelly.  Published  by 
Longmans,  Green  &  Compnay.) 

Prostitution,  however,  is  not  a  sex  problem,  but  an  economic 
problem.  A  woman  does  not  receive  money  payment  except  for 
economic  reasons.  If  the  economic  pressure  is  removed  she 
may  become  licentious,  but  she  will  not  be  a  prostitute.  Chastity 
ought  to  ‘be  a  purely  moral  or  social  question,  not  an  economic 
one.  The  competitive  system  makes  it  economic,  and  of  all  the 
crimes  imputable  to  the  competitive  system,  this  is  the  greatest, 
for  it  directly  perverts  not  only  the  human  body,  but  the  human 
soul.  *  *  * 

This  evil,  like  all  evils  that  arise  from  the  competitive  system, 
is  not  incidental  or  occasional,  but  inherent  and  necessary.  It 
cannot  be  better  stated  than  by  Miss  Woodbridge,  secretary 
of  the  Working  Women’s  Society,  in  a  report  made  to  the 
society  on  May  6,  .1890: 

“It  is  a  known  fact  that  men’s  wages  cannot  fall  below  a 
limit  upon  which  they  can  exist,  but  woman’s  wages  have  no 
limit,  since  the  paths  of  shame  are  always  open  to  her.  The 
very  fact  that  some  of  these  women  receive  partial  support  from 
brothers  br  fathers  and  are  thus  enabled  to  live  upon  less  than 
they  earn,  forces  other  women  who  have  not  such  support  either 
to  suffer  for  necessities  or  seek  other  means  of  support.” 

The  extent  to  which  wages  are  reduced  below  starvation 
rates  is  also  stated  as  follows: 

“The  wages,  which  are  low,  are  often  reduced  by  excessive 
fines,  the  employers  placing  a  value  upon  time  lost  that  is  not 
given  to  service  rendered.  The  salaries  of  saleswomen  range 
from  $2.00  to  $18.00,  but  the  latter  sum  is  only  paid  in  rare 
instances  in  cloak  and  suit  departments.  The  average  salary  in 
the  best  houses  does  not  exceed  $7.00  and  averages  $4.00  or 
$4.50  per  week.  Cashiers  receive  from  $6.00  to  $15.00,  averaging 
about  $9.00.  Cash  girls  receive  from  $1.50  to  $2.50  per  week, 
though  we  know  of  but  one  store  where  $2.50  is  paid.  In  the 
Broadway  stores  boys  are  employed  usually  on  commission. 
The  average  salary  of  one  large  shop  for  saleswomen  and  cash 
girls  is  $2.40,  another  $2.90,  another  $3.10;  but  in  the  latter  the 
employes  are  nearly  all  men  and  boys.  We  find  in  many  stores 
the  rule  to  fine  from  5  to  30  cents  for  a  few  minutes’  tardiness. 
In  one  store  all  women  who  earn  $7.00  are  fined  30  cents  for  10 
minutes’  tardiness.  Cash  girls  who  earn  $1.75  per  week  are 
fined  10  cents  for  10  minutes’  tardiness.” 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  comment  on  a  wage  to  saleswomen 
varying  from  $2.40  to  $3.10  a  week,  and  this  liable  to  reduction 
by  fines.  It  will  be  observed,  too,  that  owners  of  department 
stores  are  compelled  by  the  pressure  of  the  market  to  seek  this 
half-supported  help. 

The  Economic  Causes  of  Prostitution. — What  is  the  situation 
today  in  Chicago?  In  detail  this  may  be  learned  in  the  first 
chapter  of  this  report;  as  a  summary  we  call  especial  attention 
to  the  facts  which  follow: 

Prostitution  a  Commercial  Business. — The  first  truth  that  ths 
Commission  desires  to  impress  upon  the  citizen  of  Chicago  is  the 
fact  that  prostitution  in  this  city  is  a  COMMERCIALIZED  BUSI¬ 
NESS  of  large  proportions  with  tremendous  profits  of  more  than 
fifteen  millions  of  dollars  per  year,  controlled  largely  by  men,  not 
women. 

In  juxtaposition  with  this  group  of  professional  male  exploiters 
stand  ostensibly  respectable  citizens,  both  men  and  women,  who 
are  openly  renting  and  leasing  property  at  exorbitant  sums,  and 
thus  sharing,  through  immorality  of  investments,  the  profits  from 
this  BUSINESS.  A  business  which  demands  a  supply  of  five  thou¬ 
sand  souls  from  year  to  year  to  satisfy  the  lust  and  greed  of  men 
in  this  city  alone.  •  •  • 

Source*  of  Supply. — Wherever  there  is  a  demand,  artificial  or 
otherwise,  there  must  be  a  supply.  In  another  part  of  this  report 
the  conservative  estimate  is  made  that  there  are  about  five  thou- 


256 


sand  professional  prostitutes  in  Chicago.  Medical  men  affirm  that 
the  average  life  of  these  women  for  service  is  from  five  to  seven 
years.  Thus  it  follows  that  fresh  young  girls  must  be  continually 
supplied  to  take  the  place  of  those  who  die  or  are  rendered  use¬ 
less  by  disease.  Where  do  these  new  victims  come  from?  la  tha 
demand  supplied? 

From  the  mass  of  evidence  we  learn  that  the  path  that  lead* 
down  to  disease  and  death  is  constantly  filled  with  young  recruit* 
who  go  stumbling  on  blinded  by  the  want  of  necessities  of  life, 
by  a  desire  for  some  simple  luxuries,  by  ignorance,  by  vain  hope*, 
by  broken  promises,  by  the  deceit  and  lust  of  men. 

The  Immigrant. — The  immigrant  woman  furnishes  a  large  supply 
to  the  demand.  Generally  virtuous  when  she  comes  to  this  coun¬ 
try,  she  is  ruined  and  exploited  because  there  is  no  adequate  pro¬ 
tection  and  assistance  given  her  after  she  reaches  the  United 
States.  *  *  * 

Bad  Home  Conditions. — The  subject  under  consideration  should 
bring  forward  most  prominently,  too,  the  fact  that  supply  come* 
largely  from  bad  home  conditions  and  lack  of  recreational  priv¬ 
ileges.  *  *  * 

The  Economic  Side  of  the  Question. — The  life  of  an  unprotected 
girl  who  tries  tOf  make  a  living  in  a  great  city  is  full  of  torturing 
temptations.  First,  she  faces  the  problem  of  living  on  inade¬ 
quate  wages.  Six  dollars  a  week  is  the  average  in  mercantile 
establishments.  If  she  were  living  at  a  home  where  the  mother 
and  sister  could  help  her  with  mending,  sewing  and  washing, 
where  her  board  would  be  small,  perhaps  only  a  dollar  or  two  to¬ 
wards  the  burden  carried  by  the  other  members  of  the  family — 
where  her  lunch  would  have  come  from  the  family  larder — then 
her  condition  might  be  as  good  as  if  she  earned  eight  dollars  per 
week.  *  *  * 

Hundreds,  if  not  thousands,  of  girls  from  the  country  towns, 
and  those  born  in  the  city  but  who  have  been  thrown  on  their 
own  resources,  are  compelled  to  live  in  cheap  boarding  and  room¬ 
ing  houses  on  the  average  wage  of  six  dollars.  How  do  they 
exist  on  this  sum?  It  is  impossible  to  figure  it  out  on  a  mathe¬ 
matical  basis.  If  the  wage  were  eight  dollars  a  week,  and  the 
girl  paid  two  and  a  half  dollars  for  her  room,  one  dollar  for 
laundry,  and  sixty  cents  for  car  fare,  she  would  have  less  than 
fifty  cents  left  at  the  end  of  the  week.  That  is  provided  she  ate 
ten-cent  breakfasts,  fifteen-cent  luncheons  and  twenty-five-cent 
dinners.  But  there  is  no  doubt  that  many  girls  do  live  on  even 
six  dollars  and  do  it  honestly,  but  we  can  affirm  that  they  do 
not  have  nourishing  food  or  comfortable  shelter,  or  warm  clothe*, 
or  any  amusement,  except  perhaps  free  public  dances,  without  out¬ 
side  help,  either  from  charity  in  the  shape  of  girls’  clubs,  or 
friends  in  the  country  home. 

Prostitution  demands  youth  for  its  perpetration.  On  the  public 
rests  the  mighty  responsibility  of  seeing  to  it  that  the  demand 
is  not  supplied  through  the  breaking  down  of  the  early  education 
of  the  young  girl  or  her  exploitation  In  the  business  of  the  world. 
What  show  has  she  In  the  competitive  system  which  exists  todayf 
Whatever  her  chances  may  be  to  stand  or  fall,  she  is  here  in 
hordes  in  the  business  world  as  our  problem.  Let  us  do  something 
to  give  her  at  least  a  living  wage.  If  she  is  not  sufficiently 
skilled  to  earn  it  let  us  mix  some  religious  justice  with  our  busi¬ 
ness  and  do  something  to  increase  her  efficiency  which  she  ha« 
never  been  able  to  develop,  through  no  fault  of  her  own. 

Are  flesh  and  blood  so  cheap,  mental  qualifications  so  common 
and  honesty  of  so  little  value  that  the  manager  of  one  of  our 
big  department  stores  feels  justified  in  paying  a  high  school  girl, 
who  has  served  nearly  one  year  as  an  inspector  of  sales,  the  beg¬ 
garly  wage  of  $4.00  per  week?  What  is  the  natural  result  of 
such  an  industrial  condition?  Dishonesty  and  immorality,  not 
from  choice,  but  from  necessity — in  order  to  live.  We  can  forgive 
the  human  frailty  which  yields  to  temptation  under  such  condi¬ 
tions,  but  we  cannot  forgive  the  soulless  corporation  which  arrest* 
and  prosecutes  this  girl — -a  first  offender — when  she  takes  some 
little  articles  for  personal  adornment. — From  the  Vice  Commission 
of  Chicago,  ll-9-’ll. 

Economic  Basis  of  Prostitution. — It  is  a  sad  and  humiliating 

admission  to  make  at  the  opening  of  the  twentieth  century,  in 
one  of  the  greatest  centers  of  civilization  in  the  wdrld,  that  in 
numerous  instances  it  is  not  passion  or  corrupt  inclination,  but 
the  force  of  actual  physical  want  that  impels  young  women  along 
the  road  to  ruin. 

Intimate  contact  in  tenement  houses  is  a  predisposing  cause  to 
prostitution. — Homes  Commission  Report,  Page  227  (Chicago). 

PROF.  GRAHAM  TAYLOR,  analyzing  the  report  of  the  CHI¬ 
CAGO  VICE  COMMISSION  in  the  "SURVEY:’  for  May  6,  1911, 
says: 

"The  sources  whence  these  24,320  women  and  girls  (prostitutes) 
were  drawn  into  vice  included  bad  or  uncongenial  homes;  low 
wages,  insufficient  either  for  proper  maintenance  or  to  relieve  the 
monotony  of  constant  toil;  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  and  the  want 
of  provision  for  recreation;  procuring,  through  many  agencies; 
Involuntary  entrance  upon  or  continuance  in  white  slavery;  sub- 
normality.’’ 

JANE!  ADDAMS  says:  "Subnormality  is,  except  In  very  rare  in¬ 
stances,  the  result  of  poverty.”  *  •  * 

The  Vice  Commission  report  of  Chicago  says  (p.  199): 

"The  whole  tendency  of  modern  life,  which  places  a  greater 
strain  on  the  nervous  system  of  both  men  and  women  of  all  classes 


257 


tha>n  Ims  ever  been  placed  at  any  time  in  the  history  of  the  civ¬ 
ilized  world,  cannot  but,  to  a  great  extent,  develop  considerable 
eroticism. 

Mass.  Legislative  House  Doc.  (page  1868,  No.  38)  says: 

The  effect  of  overwork  on  morals  is  closely  related  to  the  in¬ 
jury  t0.health-  Laxity  of  moral  fibre  follows  physical  debility 
When  the  working  day  is  so  long  that  no  time  is  ever  left  for  a 
minimum  of  leisure  or  home  life,  relief  from  the  strain  of  work 
is  sought  m  alcoholic  stimulants  and  other  excesses.” 

Results  of  an.  investigation  made  by  the  Massachusetts  State 
.Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  to  determine  how  far  the  entrance  of 
women  into  the  industrial  world  under  the  disadvantage  of  low 
wages,  was  contributing  to  profligacy.  The  Bureau  gathered  sta¬ 
tistics  of  the  previous  occupations  of  nearly  4,000  fallen  women  in 
28  American  cities. 

Eight  hundred  had  worked  at  low  wages 

Five  hundred  had  been  garment  workers.' 

One  hundred  and  sixteen  came  from  department  stores. 

One  thousand  two  hundred  and  thirty-six,  or  nearly  32  per  cent 
reported  no  previous  occupation.  r 

ants  6  thousand  one  hundred  and  fifteen  had  been  domestic  serv- 

i  n??  wr.itin&  up°nn  subject  in  Pearson’s  Magazine  for  February,, 
a!'  w78’  •Rl,ch^’d  Barry  refers  to  a  census  taken  last 

the  Womans  Trade  Union  League  of  Chicago,  which 
showed  that  from  2o  per  cent  to  30  per  cent  of  the  women  em¬ 
ployed  in  the  department  stores  were  not  receiving  sufficient 
money  to  enable  them  to  procure  the  necessities  of  life.”  *  *  •-  ' 

(P.  203. ) 

And  again,  Mr.  Barry  calls  attention  to  the  work  of  a  New  York 
women/  the  matron  of  which  is  said  to  have  declared 
that  16  per  cent  of  the  girls  who  applied  there  for  refuge  have 
entered  a  life  of  immorality  in  the  greatest  city  in  the  country 
because  of  insufficient  wages,  which  do  not  allow  them  to  pay  for 
food  and  lodging.”  (P.  204.)  * 

Extracts  from  “THE  SOCIAL  EVIL  IN  CHICAGO— A  Study  of 
Existing  Conditions  with  Recommendations  by  the  Vice  Commig- 
ary1  1910)^*911  »(Dean  Walter  Sumner,  Chairman)  (Started  Janu- 

The  report  of  the  Chicago  Vice  Commission  (p.  170)  reports  that 
upon  investigation  of  the  causes  of  thirty  inmates  for  entering 
a  life  of  prostitution,  twelve  were  on  account  of  economic  condi¬ 
tions,  or  40  per  cent. 

“Overwork  is  the  fruitful  source  of  innumerable  evils.  Ten  and 
eleven  hours  daily  of  hard  labor  are  more  than  the  human  system 
can  bear,  save  in  a  few  exceptional  case.  *  *  *  It  cripples 
the  body,  ruins  health,  shortens  life.  It  stunts  the  mind  gives 
no  time  for  culture,  no  opportunity  for  reading,  study  or  mental 
improvement.  It  leaves  the  system  jaded  and  worn,  with  no  abil¬ 
ity  to  study.  *  *  *  It  tends  to  dissipation  in  various  forms. 

The  exhausted  system  craves  stimulants.  This  opens  the  door  to 
other  indulgences,  from  which  flow  not  only  the  degeneracy  of 
individuals,  but  the  degeneracy  of  the  race.” — (P.  2  4)  Relations 
Between  Labor  and  Capital.  U.  S.  Senate  Committee,  1883.  Vol.  I. 

In  the  State  of  Kentucky  there  are  47,000  working  women  who 
earn  only  $5.50  a  week,  and  there  are  3,000  women  in  the  tobacco 
earn  only  $4.50  a  week.  Investigations  show  that 
$6.50  is  the  least  that  a  woman  can  live  decently  on.  Mrs.  Glen- 
dower  Evans,  of  the  Minimum  Wage  Commission,  appointed  last 
year  (1911),  in  Massachusetts,  sets  forth  facts  taken  from  th® 
Federal  Labor  Report  which  illumine  this  topic.  Of  the  store 
women  investigated,  4.8  per  cent  had  insufficient  food  or  housing, 
or  both.  These  women  were  earning  on  an  average  a  weekly 
wage  of  $5.31,  and  the  average  cost  of  necessities,  such  as  rent, 
rood,  light,  heat  and  laundry  was  $4.35,  leaving  less  than  $1.00  to 
cover  other  necessities.  Of  a  group  of  1,568  women  workers  in 
Boston,  62  per  cent  had  no  margin  whatever  to  spend  on  amuse¬ 
ment.  Every  penny  went  to — “just  live.”  In  that  city  half  th® 
women  adrift,  a  matter  of  20,000  or  more,  were  living  in  lodging 
and  boarding  houses,  and  two-thirds  of  these,  that  is,  between 
13,000  and  14,000  girls  and  women,  had  to  entertain  their  friends, 
men  as  well  as  women,  in  their  bed-rooms.  *  *  *  The  Report 

of  the  Massachusetts  Commission  on  Minimum  Wage  Boards  pre- 
eented  the  analysis  and  the  facts  concerning  the  wages  of  15  807 
women  engaged  in  four  of  the  leading  industries  of  Massachusetts. 
Some  of  these  women  were  earning  less  than  $4.00  a  week,  many 
less  than  $5.00,  and  most  of  them  between  $5.00  and  $6.00  a  week 
— Review  of  Reviews,  May,  1912  (pp.  439-440). 


(From  the  Miners'  Magaine,  March  27,  1913.) 

“Less  than  25  per  cent  of  the  unfortunate  women  in  this 
country  would  have  fallen  if  they  had  had  an  equally  good 
chance  to  lead  a  pure  life. 

“Poverty,  low  wage,  improper  home  conditions,  lack  of  train¬ 
ing,  craving  for  amusement  and  pretty  things,  are  responsible 
for  their  fall.” — John  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr. 

“The  chief  cause  of  the  social  evil  is  to  be  found  in  our 
social  and  industrial  conditions.  If  women  and  girls  were  paid 
a  living  salary  there  would  be  very  few  women  on  the  streets. 
Here  in  New  York  some  of  those  making  the  greatest  noise 


258 


on  the  subject  are  men  who  pay  starvation  wages  to  women 
and  girls.  One  of  the  set  of  men  who  own  three  of  the  biggest 
department  stores  in  the  city,  where  girls  are  paid  from  $2.50 
to  $10.00  a  week,  is  swaggering  around,  saying  how  he  is  gonig 
to  spend  millions  to  stop  white  slavery,  as  some  people  call  it. 
My  opinion  is  that  he  ought  either  to  raise  his  wages  or  shut 
up.” — Ex-Mayor  Gaynor  of  N.  Y. 

Department  of  Justice  On  Causes  of  White  Slavery  and  Prosti¬ 
tution. 

(From  the  Chicago  Tribune,  May  22,  1914.) 

(By  a  staff  correspondent.) 

Washington,  D.  C„  May  21.— (Special.)— The  department  of 
justice  today  took  issue  with  the  special  committee  of  the  Pres¬ 
byterian  general  assembly  on  the  causes  of  the  social  evil 

The  Presbyterian  committee  reported  that  there  are  100,000 
white  slaves  in  this  country.  The  department  of  justice  says 
there  are  far  more  than  100,000. 

The  Presbyterian  committee  counted  among  the  causes  ot 
social  vice  the  present  styles  in  women’s  clothes,  the  trend  of 
present  day  literature,  the  character  of  modern  dances,  and  the 
growing  demand  for  more  intimate  knowledge  of  sex.  questions. 

The  department  of  justice  says  that  commercialized  vice  is 
attributable  to  two  causes  in  90  per  cent  of  the  cases  which  have 
come  to  its  attention.  One  is  the  poverty  of  the  girl,  the  other 
is  the  desire  of  the  persons  who  prey  on  girls  for  financial  gam. 

Never  Blamed  Clothes. 

“There  has  never  been  a  case  in  the  department  s  history 
that  I  know  of,”  said  one  investigator  after  reading  the  Presby- 
terian  report,  “where  a  girl  has  attributed  her  fall  to  the  clothes 
she  wore,  the  dances  she  has  danced,  or  the  books  she  has  read. 
There  have  been  cases  where  girls  have  envied  the  clothes  other 
women  wore  and  fell  because  of  a  desire  to  acquire  fine ^things 
they  could  not  get  in  any  other  way;  also,  there  have  been  many 
cases  where  evils  which  go  with  dancing,  such  as  drinking,  have 
led  a  girl  to  her  ruin.  But  clothes,  dancing,  and  reading  have 
not  caused  the  downfall  of  any  girls  that  we  know  of,  th°“gh 
dance  halls  have.  It  isn’t  the  style  of  dancing,  but  the  environ- 
ment  at  dances  which  does  the  work  there. 

“Commercialized  vice,  however,  is  founded  on  one  basis  and 
one  alone;  the  desire  of  people  to  profit.  At  first  of  course  the 
girl  may  think  she  is  in  love,  and  that  fine  things  come  as  a 
result  of  a  man’s  true  affection.  We  all  know  of  such  case  , 
but  the  foundation  of  commercialized  vice  is  the ;  ^  "  ’ 

Rob  it  of  that,  create  better  economic  conditions  in  the  hones 
walks  of  life,  and  vice  as  a  commercial  element  in  our  civil, za- 
tion  will  be  wiped  out. 

Nearly  All  Poor  Girls. 

"The  present  extreme  modes  in  clothes  may  attract  men 
and  the  discussion  of  sex  questions  by  modern  writers  an l  the 
extreme  dances  all  may  attract  some  persons  of  both  sexes. 
But  these  persons  are  not  the  ones  ^>*0  ^  become  patrons^ 
victims  of  commercial  vice.  Practically  10  P 
victims  of  the  white  slave  traffic  are  poor  girls.  The  per  cent  o 
STwh.  are  not  poor  is  so  small  as  to  be  almost  infinitesimal. 

The  Relation  of  Poverty  and  Immorality. 

(From  Senate  Document  No.  645.  Vol.  XV.  Pages 

Poverty,  whether  it  be  the  result  of  a  low  family  income 
of  insufficient  wages  for  a  girl  living  by  t0"£' gift 

question  of  immorality  in  many  ways.  '  It  decides  the  gir 


259 


companionships,  her  amusements,  her  ability  to  gratify  without 
danger  her  natural  and  reasonable  tastes,  her  very  capacity  for 
resistance  to  temptation.  Its  physical  effects  open  the  way 
to  moral  dangers.  It  means  overcrowding  and  bad  sanitary 
conditions,  and  undernutrition  or  malnutrition,  and  insufficient 
or  unsuitable  clothing.  A  social  worker  with  eight  years’  ex¬ 
perience  in  one  of  the  leading  factory  centers  thus  summarized 
the  situation. 

Between  the  crowding  and  bad  air,  both  at  home  and  at 
their  work,  and  the  kind  of  food  they  eat,  and  the  long  hours 
and  monotony  of  their  employment,  they  are  constantly  in  an 
abnormal  state.  They  are  feverish  and  uncomfortable;  they 
want  something,  but  they  don’t  know  what  it  is.  They  crave, 
with  an  intensity  we  can  hardly  realize,  something  to  make 
them  forget  their  discomfort,  to  divert  their  minds  from  the 
weariness  of  their  lives.  That  is  why  they  flock  to  those  cheap 
amusement  places,  which  are  the  only  ones  they  can  afford. 
There  they  find  temptation  on  every  hand,  and  they  are  in 
poor  condition  to  resist  it.  The  great  wonder  to  me  is  that  so 
few  yield.  It’s  not  only  the  girls’  wages  which  must  be  taken 
into  consideration;  it’s  the  family  income  and  the  whole  way  of 
working  and  living.  Part  of  it  could  be  improved  if  the  girls 
knew  more  about  housekeeping  and  cooking,  but  much  of.  it 
couldn’t  be  unless  the  family  income  were  considerably  in¬ 
creased.  When  girls  are  not  living  at  home,  conditions  are 
apt  to  be  even  worse  for  life  on  their  wages  means  unceasing 
struggle  and  privation.  Practically,  though,  all  the  girls  here 
live  at  home  or  with  relatives. 

(c)  ONE  GIRL’S  CASE. 

(From  The  Chicago  Tribune,  September  20,  1913.) 

Breakfast — Coffee  and  rolls. 

Dinner — Beef  stew,  milk,  rice  pudding. 

Supper — Fruit  salad,  graham  crackers,  and  milk. 

A  reporter  for  The  Tribune  yesterday  submitted  the  above 
menu  to  an  expert  on  food  values  who  is  a  graduate  of  many 
colleges  and  knows  exactly  what  he  is  talking  about.  The 
reporter  wanted  to  know  whether  or  not  they  embrace  the 
elements  necessary  to  the  support  of  human  life. 

The  learned  man  responded  that  they  are  full  to  satiety  with 
fats,  proteids,  and  carbohydrates.  In  fact,  he  said,  they  form 
a  regimen  that  is  positively  Lucullan. 

“Why,”  he  added,  “there  are  lots  of  people  in  Chicago  who 
live  on  just  that.” 

The  reporter  is  not  equipped  to  attack  Science  in  her  lair. 
Nevertheless,  he  knows  that  the  expert  is  utterly  and  tragically 
mistaken.  Whatever  such  a  diet’s  chemistry  may  be  it  lacks 
one  vital  essence — something  to  make  the  consumer’s  life  worth 
living.  He  knows  it  because  he  has  investigated  the  case  of 
Selma  Peterson. 

The  girl  was  found  yesterday  afternoon  at  her  room  at  519 
Lincoln  Parkway.  The  place  was  full  of  gas  because  she  had 
left  the  jet  open.  She  was  taken  to  the  county  hospital,  where 
she  was  revived,  made  an  ante-mortem  statement,  and.  died. 
Her  career  having  thus  expeditiously  terminated,  a  clerk  in  the 
coroner’s  office  proceeded  to  write  her  obituary.  It  read  as  fol¬ 
lows: 

Selma  Peterson,  19  years  old.  Suicide  at  519  Lincoln  park¬ 
way  by  gas  asphyxiation.  No  relatives.  Cause  unknown. 

The  last  entry,  suggesting  mystery  prompted  investigation. 

A  visit  to  Selma’s  little  room  was  rewarded  by  the  discovery  of 
three  items  calculated  to  illuminate  the  clerk’s  colorless  account 
of  her  career. 


260 


One  of  these  was  a  Bible,  on  the  fly  leaf  of  which  was 
written: 

To  Selma,  from  her  mother. 

A  second  item  was  a  note  in  which  Selma  herself  had  at¬ 
tempted  to  shed  some  light  upon  her  story.  It  said: 

“Wages  too  low.  Life  is  not  worth  living.” 

The  third  was  a  little  note  book.  In  it  the  girl  had  recorded 
the  three  menus  (set  forth  above.  There  were  other  items  in  the 
book  which  indicated  Selma  was  a  desperate  student  of  eco¬ 
nomics.  From  them  it  appeared  she  was  employed  by  the  Kup- 
penheimer  clothiers,  at  428  Franklin  street,  at  a  wage  of  $8 
a  week.  This  income  Selma  had  distributed  as  follows: 


Meals  . $3.15 

Room  rent  .  2.50 

Car  fare  . 60 

Laundry  .  1.00 


Total  . $7.25 


Thus  in  mathematics  that  could  not  be  refuted,  Selma  had 
been  able  to  demonstrate  to  her  own  entire  satisfaction  that  at 
the  end  of  each  week,  having  liquadated  all  current  indebted¬ 
ness,  she  would  have  left  for  orchids,  automobile  rides,  and 
theater  parties  a  grand  aggregate  of  75  cents. 

Having  gratified  a  ghoul-like  propensity  with  these  inquiries 
the  reporter  went  out  to  the  county  hospital  and  talked  to  the 
doctor  who  had  been  with  Selma  when  she  died. 

“Yes,”  said  the  physician,  “she  revived.  For  a  short  time 
before  she  died  she  was  entirely  lucid.” 

“What  did  she  say?” 

“Why,  now  that  you  mention  it,  she  said  a  funny  thing.  I 
asked  her  what  made  her  do  it.  She  did  not  answer  for  a  long 
time  and  then  she  asked: 

“  ‘Doctor,  did  you  ever  live  for  six  months  on  twenty-cent 
dinners?’  ” 

(d)  WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC. 

“In  at  least  80  per  cent  of  the  cases  prosecuted  actual  fraud 
or  duress  in  some  form  or  other  is  employed  to  compel  these 
girls  to  go'  into  this  sort  of  business.”  Mr.  Fine'h  of  the  U.  S. 
Department  of  Justice  before  the  sub-committee  of  the  House 
Comm,  on  Appropriations.  National  Soc.,  March  1,  1913. 

SENATE  DCfC.  196.  “Importing-  Women  for  Immoral  Purposes.” 
To  the  motive  of  business  profit  is  due  beyond  question  the  impulse 
which  creates  and  upholds  the  traffic.  *  *  * 

The  hirelings  of  the  traffic  are  stationed  at  certain  points  of 
entry  in  Canada  where  large  numbers  of  immigrants  are  landed 
to  do  what  is  known  in  their  parlance  as  ‘‘cutting  out  work.”  •  *  • 
When  women  are  brought  into  this  country  for  immoral  pur¬ 
poses,  usually  they  come  either  as  wives  or  relatives  of  the  mem 
accompanying  them.  *  *  *  , 

The  recruiting  of  alien  women  or  girls  who  enter  the  U.  S.  in 
violation  of  section  3  of  the  Immigration  Act,  or  to  live  in  this 
country  in  violation  of  this  provision,  is  carried  on  both  here  and 
abroad.  *  *  * 

In  naming  the  business  of  importing  women,  the  ‘white  slave 
traffic,”  the  public  has  instinctively  stated  the  fact  that  the  busi¬ 
ness  is  maintained  for  profit.  It  Is  probably  no  exaggeration  to 
•ay  that  if  means  can  be  devised  of  stripping  the  profits  from  It 
the  traffic  will  cease.  *  *  *  ... 

SENATE  REPORT  No.  886 — Governmental  investigations  which 
have  been  conducted  disclose  the  fact  that  the  importation  of 
women  from  foreign  countries  has  been  systematic  and  contin¬ 
uous,  and  has  not  been  limited  to  isolated  and  accidental 

QCLSQS  ♦  #  • 

Various  arrests  have  been  made  in  the  Chicago  districts  which 
discloses  the  existence  of  a  traffic  in  girls  from  Hungary,  Sweden, 
Norway,  Denmark,  Great  Britain  and  other  countries.  •  •  • 

President  of  the  Woman’s  National  Industrial  League  to  the 
House  Committee. — ‘‘Syndicates  exist  in  New  York  and  Boston  for 
the  purpose  of  supplying  fresh  young  girls  from  immigrant* 
arriving  in  this  country,  for  houses  of  ill  fame;  agents  of  th* 
business  go  abroad  and  assist  in  this  nefarious  business.  Immi¬ 
grants  arriving  in  New  York  furnish  20,000  victims  annually.  •  •  • 


261 


W.  T.  Stead,  Reporting  the  Testimony  of  Dora  Claflin,  the 
‘Madam”  of  a  House  of  III  Fame. — “I  say  honestly  that  I  do  not 
>elieve  that  one  woman  In  10,000  would  cast  herself  at  the  feet  of 
ust  except  under  duress  or  under  the  force  of  circumstances.  •  *  * 

“The  recruiting-  grounds  of  the  bagnio  are  the  stores,  wher* 
yirls  work  long  hours  for  small  pay;  the  homes  that  have  few 
;omforts  and  practically  no  pleasure;  the  streets,  where  girls  are 
>ften  cast,  still  unknown  to  sin,  but  in  want  and  without  shel- 
;er.  *  *  • 

“In  the  case  of  prostitution,  the  real  cause  lies  not  in  the  girls 
irho  fall,  but  in  the  social  conditions  that  make  the  fall  easy.” 

George  K.  Turner  (McClure’s,  April,  1907). — “The  price  paid  (for 
?irls)  is  about  $50  a  head.  In  some  cases  $75  has  been  given. 
This  money  paid  over  to  the  agent  is  charged  up  to  the  debt  of 
;he  woman  of  the  house.  She  pays  that  for  her  own  sale.  In  ad¬ 
dition  she  gives  over  a  large  share  of  her  earnings  to  the  man 
who  places  her.” 


Beyond  any  question  irrespective  of  extent,  prostitution  as  a 
justness  in  New  York  City,  in  order  to  be  profitable,  requires  the 
lervices  of  a  ‘cadet”  and  the  protector.  It  is  no  longer  the  case 
:hat  houses  of  prostitution  are  established  in  a  locality  because 
here  is  a  demand,  and  that  patrons  seek  them  and  go  thither  in 
m  orderly  way.  Instead  of  that,  a  small  army  of  unemployed 
ricious  young  men  are  used  to  solicit  patrons  who  are  not  seeking 
Ilsorderly  places,  to  keep  women  on  the  street  to  solicit  patrons 
:°  see  that  houses  secure  inmates,  and  that  vice  in  general  is  not 
til  owed  to  decrease.  It  is  for  the  profit  of  these  men  and  of 
rarious  business  and  political  interests  which  find  prostitution  a 
valuable  pawn  in  the  game  for  power  that  women  become  prosti- 
:utes.  The  cadet”  and  “protector”  express  the  abnormal  stimula- 
:ion  of  vice.- — The  Social  Evil  in  New  York  City,  1910 


t^rom  Hearings  Before  the  Illinois  Senate  Welfare  Commission. 


(Quoted  in  Chicago  Daily  Tribune,  March  7,  1913.) 

The  last  witnesses  of  the  day,  the  women  of  the  tenderloin, 
alked  in  whispers.  All  said  that  they  had  been  unable  to  make 
i  living  of  reputable  callings.  “A,”  a  woman  of  38  years,  worked 
n  a  laundry  at  $4.50  a  week  after  her  husband  died  and  left  her 
yith  two  children. 


“You  couldn’t  support  a  family  on  that,  could  you?”  inquired 
D’Hara. 

“No,  I  found  out  thatvj  couldn’t  even  support  myself  on  it, 
;o  I  went  wrong.” 

“How  old  were  you  then?” 

“Twenty-eight.” 

“Where  are  the  children  now?”  she  was  asked. 

“Well,  you  may  be  sure  they  are  not  in  Chicago.” 


*  *  *  *  *  * 


“P.  B.”  worked  in  a  St.  Louis  shoe  factory  from  the  age  of 
.4  years  to  18  years  and  never  got  more  than  $5.00  a  week. 
Then  she  answered  the  call  of  the  underworld  and  had  been 
here  for  5  years.  Like  the  others,  she  placed  her  earnings  at 
ibout  $5.00  a  week. 

*  *  *  *  *  * 


“R.  M.”  worked  for  $3.00  a  week  but  her  parents  seemed 
lissatisfied  with  her  contribution  to  the  general  fund  and  she 
bund  another  way. 

*  *  *  *  *  * 

“J.  H.”  on  the  stand. 

“Why  did  you  go  wrong?”  asked  Senator  Juul.  “Too  little 
noney?” 

“Well,  yes,  that  was  it.” 

“What  did  you  work  at  before  that?” 

“Domestic  servant.” 

“What  were  you  paid?” 

“Two-fifty.  I  got  up  at  5  o’clock  in  the  morning  and  worked 
intil  through,  generally  about  8  o’clock  at  night.  I  had  enough 
o  eat  but  I  did  not  want  to  work  so  hard.  I  got  to  running 
iround  with  fellows  and  then  I’d  want  to  be  decent  and  would 
;o  back  to  work  again,  but  it  was  too  hard.  I  began  household 
vork  after  my  parents  died  and  I  was  ten  years  old.  I  stuck 
o  it  till  I  was  17.” 

****** 

Edward  Hillman,  proprietor  of  Hillman’s  Department  Store, 


262 


was  asked:  “Do  you  think  that  a  woman  would  sell  her  virtue 
before  she  would  starve?” 

“Yes,  I  do.” 

****** 


Peoria,  Ill.,  March  15  (Associated  Press  Dispatch).— The 
girls  who  testified  were  unanimous  in  their  statements  that  low 
wages  had  been  in  a  great  measure  contributory  to  their  down¬ 
fall.  The  employers  as  a  rule  conceded  that  low  wages  might 
contribute  to  vice. 


Georgia  Hall,  keeper  of  a  resort,  stated  that  she  had  been 
a  keeper  of  a  house  of  ill-fame  for  the  past  22  years.  She  de¬ 
clared  that  nine  out  of  every  ten  cases  of  fallen  girls  which  had 
come  under  her  personal  observation  were  directly  traceable  to 
“starvation  wages.” 

Senator  Beall:  “During  your  22  years  of  experience  with 
these  people  have  you  ever  known  an  instance  of  the  girl  who 
went  wrong  on  account  of  low  wages?” 

“Yes,  several;  since  I  have  been  in  Peoria  a  girl  named 
Dorothy  Johnson,  came  to  me  from  Lincoln,  Ills.  She  had  been 
working  there,  but  declared  that  she  could  not  earn  enough 
money  to  live  comfortably.  She  had  no  clothes  and  appeared 
to  be  half  starved.  I  took  her  into  my  house. 

“I  know  other  girls  who  work  for  eight  hours  each  day.  for 
starvation  wages  and  then  walk  the  streets  until  late  at  night 
in  order  to  make  enough  money  to  live.  I  believe  there  are 
many  such  girls  in  this  city  and  I  have  heard  that  it  is  the 
custom  in  certain  stores  for  the  employers^  to  suggest  to  the 
employes  that  they  get  ‘gentlemen  friends.’  ” 

Julius  Rosenwald,  president  of  Sears,  Roebuck  &  Co.,  testi¬ 
fied  that  no  girl  in  his  employ  receives  less  than  $5.00.  A  15- 
year-old  girl  said  she  was  employed  as  “addresser  and  paid 
$4.50  a  week  for  ten  hours  a  day. 

Second  girl  testified  that  “scolders”,  are  employed.  Fore 
women  threaten  girls  with  loss  of  position. 

Girl  testified  she  was  brought  repeatedly  to  scolding  desk 
because  she  sought  rest  by  sitting  down  occasionally.  She  was 

weak  and  half  sick.  . 

Rosenwald  admitted  that  in  1911  his  firm  made  a  profit  of 

^  ’  The  company  could  have  applied  $2,000,000  on  increased  sal 
aries  and  still  have  paid  7  per  cent  interest  on  Preferred  and 
common  stock.  At  the  close  of  the  fiscal  year  of  1912 !  there  was 
a  surplus  of  $12,000,000.  Company  capitalized  at  $50,000,000  and 
pays  about  16  per  cent. 

*  *  *  *  *  * 

Edwin  F.  Mandel  said  no  girl  could  live  on  less  than  $7.25 
a  week. 


Pres.  Roy  M.  Shayne,  of  John  T.  Shayne  &  Co.,  furriers 
said  no  girl  can  live  on  less  than  $8.00  or  $9.00  in  a  big  city 
He  also  said  he  thought .  there  was  an  intimate  connection 
between  low  wages  and  vice. 


14.  Divorce  and  Marriage. 


(U  S.  Statistical  Abstract  for  1912.  Summarized  by  Morris 
Hillquit  in  “Socialism:  Promise  or  Menace,  pp.  181.- 
182.  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1914.) 


The  total  number  of  divorces  granted  in  the  United  States 
between  1887  and  1906  was  900,584;  in  other  words,  within  ? 
period  of  twenty  years,  or  about  half  of  the  duration  of  a  norma 
conjugal  life,  over  1,800,000  persons  were  divorced  from  each 
other  by  formal  judicial  decree.  In  1906  there  were  72,962 


263 


divorces  against  853,290  marriages — one  divorce  for  every  twelve 
marriages. 

According  to  the  census  figures  of  1910,  the  total  male  popu¬ 
lation  of  the  country,  twenty  years  old  and  over,  was  about 
28,000,000.  Out  of  these  8,102,062  were  single,  1,470,280  widowed, 
and  155,815  divorced.  Out  of  the  25,500,000  women  over  twenty 
years  old,  4,947,406  were  single,  3,165,967  were  widowed  and 
181,418  divorced. 

Thus  out  of  a  total  of  53,500,000  adult  American,  18,000,000, 
or  more  than  a  third,  were  unmated.  “This,”  observes  Com¬ 
missioner  Rittenhouse,  who  was  charged  with  the  task  of  inves¬ 
tigating  the  alarming  facts,  “is  an  unfortunate  and  startling 
state  of  affairs.  Moreover,  from  the  ranks  of  the  unmarried 
comes  humanity’-s  heaviest  contribution  to  immorality  and 
crime.” 

Divorces — 1890  to  1900. 

(U.  S.  Statistical  Abstract,  page  79.) 


1890 

1900 

1870 

1880 

1890 

1900 


Number  Divorces  per  100,000 
divorces,  married  population. 

. .  33,197  148 

. .  55,502  200 

Divorces  per  100,000  of  the  total  population  from  1870  to  1900: 

.  29 

.  38 

. 58 

.  73 


One  Out  of  Every  Ten. 


Dr.  W.  C.  Woodward,  the  health  officer  of  the  District  of 
Columbia,  the  capital  of  the  nation,  testified  before  a  senatorial 
vice  commission  of  the  state  of  Illinois  which  held  a  special 
session  there.  Among  other  things  Dr.  Woodward  said: 

“Ten  per  cent  of  all  the  recorded  births  in  the  District 
of  Columbia  last  year  were  illegitimate,  the  mothers  being 
between  13  and  20  years  of  age  in  the  majority  of  cases.” 

According  to  this  showing  one  out  of  every  ten  babies  born 
in  the  capital  city  of  the  American  republic  is  born  out  of  wed¬ 
lock. 

What  have  those  to  say  who  are  everlastingly  charging 
Socialism  with  being  immoral  and  with  having  designs  upon 
the  marriage  relation  to  this  startling  showing? 

Here  we  have  the  statement  positive  from  a  high  public 
official  under  capitalism  that  ten  per  cent  of  the  babies  born 
in  the  District  of  Columbia,  which  will  doubtless  hold  good 
throughout  the  country,  are  illegitimate. 

Capitalism,  according  to  your  own  highest  authority,  places 
the  brand  of  illegitimacy  upon  ten  out  of  every  hundred  chil¬ 
dren  born  under  it. 

15.  Intemperance. 


(a)  CONSUMPTION  OF  ALCOHOLIC  BEVERAGES  IN 
THE  UNITED  STATES. 

(From  the  Statistical  Abstract  of  the  United  States,  1912, 

page  600.) 


Total  consumption  per  capita. 


Total 

consump- 

Distilled 

Malt 

All  Liq’re 

tion 

of  wines 

spirits. 

Wines. 

Liq’rs. 

and  wine# 

and 

Liquors 

Proof 

'  Gallons. 

Galls. 

Galls. 

Galls. 

Galls. 

1840 

71,244,823 

2.52 

0.29 

1.36 

4.17 

1850 

94,712,853 

2.24 

.27 

1.58 

4.08 

L  8  60 

202,120,007 

2.86 

.34  ' 

3.22 

6.43 

1870 

296,876,931 

2.07 

.32 

5.31 

7.70 

1871-80 

392,558,432 

1.39 

.47 

6.93 

8.7t 

L881-90 

751,074,446 

1.34 

.48 

11.38 

13.21 

1891 

1,067,471,393 

1.43 

.46 

14.84 

16.72 

1892 

1,114,876,299 

1.49 

.43 

lS.20 

17.18 

1893 

1,207,365,215 

1.52 

.48 

16.19 

18.20 

(Continued) 


264 


(a)  CONSUMPTION  OF  ALCOHOLIC  BEVERAGES  IN 
THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Total  consumption  per ’capita. 


Total  consump¬ 
tion  of  wines 

Distilled 

spirits. 

Wines. 

Malt 

Liq’rs. 

All  Liq’rs 
and  wines 

and  Liquors 
Gallon. 

Proof 

Galls. 

Galls. 

Galls. 

Galls. 

1894 

1,148,447,584 

1.34 

.32 

15.32 

16. 9t 

1895 

1,142,552,426 

1.14 

.30 

15.13 

16.67 

1896 

1,202,893,116 

1.01 

.27 

15.85 

17.12 

1897 

1,180,941,634 

1.02 

.53 

14.94 

16.50 

1898 

1,266,662,417 

1.12 

.28 

15.96 

17.37 

1899 

1,250,174,849 

1.18 

.35 

15.30 

16.82 

1900 

1,349,732,435 

1.28 

.39 

16.09 

17.76 

1901 

1,390,912,302 

1.31 

.36 

15.98 

17.65 

1902 

1,539,859,237 

1.34 

.61 

17.18 

19.14 

1903 

1,606,217,122 

1.43 

.47 

17.67 

19.57 

1904 

1,663,776,829 

1.45 

.52 

17.91 

19.87 

1905 

1,694,455,976 

1.42 

.41 

18.02 

19.85 

1906 

1,874,758,027 

1.47 

.53 

19.54 

21.56 

1907 

2,020,136,809 

1.58 

.65 

20.56 

22.79 

1908 

2,006,233,408 

1.39 

.58 

20.26 

22.22 

1909 

1,935,544,011 

1.32 

.67 

19.07 

21.06 

1910 

2,045,427,018 

1.42 

.65 

20.09 

22.19 

1911 

2,169,356,975 

1.46 

.67 

20.66 

22.79 

1912 

2,128,452,226 

1.44 

.58 

19.96 

21.98 

(b)  ATTITUDE  OF  SOCIALIST  PARTIES  ON  LIQUOR 
PROBLEM. 

(From  “Socialism  in  Theory  and  Practice/’  by  Morris  Hillquit. 

Published  by  the  Macmillan  Company.  Pages  313-314.) 

Of  late  the  socialists  of  many  countries  have  considerably 
changed  their  views  on  the  problem  of  alcoholism  and  on  the 
value  of  the  modern  temperance  movements.  They  have  grad¬ 
ually  come  to  realize  that  in  the  matter  of  abstinence  from,  or 
temperance  in  the  use  of  alcoholic  drinks,  the  purely  moral  fac¬ 
tors  of  will  power  and  determination  play  a  large  part.  In  their 
campaigns  against  the  drink  evil  they  still  lay  the  greater 
stress  on  the  betterment  of  the  material  conditions  of  the 
workers,  but  they  also  recognize  the  value  of  a  purely  educa¬ 
tional  propoganda  against  the  abuses  of  alcohol. 

To  the  Social  Democratic  Party  of  Austria  belongs  the  merit 
of  having  stated  the  proposition  most  clearly  and  tersely  in  a, 
resolution  adopted  in  1903,  and  from  which  we  quote  the  fol¬ 
lowing  portion: 

“This  convention  declares  that  alcoholism  has  a  disastrous 
effect  on  the  physical  and  mental  powers  of  the  working  class, 
and  that  it  is  a  strong  obstacle  to  the  organizing  work  of 
socialism.  No  means  to  remove  the  evils  arising  from  alcohol¬ 
ism  should,  therefore,  be  neglected.  *  *  * 

“The  principal  means  in  this  struggle  will  always  be  the 
elevation  of  the  material  conditions  of  the  proletariat,  but  a 
necessary  supplement  to  this  is  the  task  of  enlightening  the 
workers  on  the  effects  of  alcohol  and  of  shattering  their  preju¬ 
dices  in  favor  of  the  drinking  habit.” 

The  socialists  of  Germany  declare  it  to  be  the  duty  of  organ¬ 
ized  labor  to  see  to  it  that  the  workingmen,  and  especially  their 
children,  be  enlightened  by  oral  and  written  propaganda,  on 
the  dangers  arising  from  the  use  of  alcohol  and  the  drink- 
treating  habit. 

A  similar  stand  has  been  taken  by  the  socialists  of  Switzer¬ 
land  and  Holland.  In  Sweden  the  socialist  program  contain* 
a  plank  demanding  that  the  public  schools  include  in  their 
curriculum  a  regular  study  course  on  the  evils  of  alcoholism. 
In  Norway  the  Socialist  party  demands  the  imposition  of  heavy 
taxes  on  all  alcoholic  beverages.  In  England  the  Labor  party 
favors  the  local  option  system.  In  Belgium  the  socialists  have 
banished  all  alcoholic  drinks  from  their  numerous  meeting 
places  and  recreation  halls,  while  the  Socialists  of  Finland 
demand  the  unconditional  prohibition  of  all  manufacture  and 
sale  of  alcoholic  drinks. 

The  socialists  of  the  United  States  for  the  first  time  took 


official  notice  of  the  alcohol  problem  at  their  national  conven¬ 
tion  of  1908. 

Resolution  Adopted  by  National  Committee  of  the  Socialist 
Party,  in  Session,  May,  1914. 

Whereas,  The  problem  of  the  liquor  traffic  has  become  an 
issue  of  vital  importance  in  state  and  nation;  and 

Whereas,  The  International  Socialist  movement  is  now  giv¬ 
ing  careful  study  and  consideration  to  this  question,  it  being 
placed  on  the  agenda  at  the  International  Socialist  Congress 
it.  Vienna,  this  year;  and 

Whereas,  The  Socialist  party  should  take  a  definite  and 
scientific  position  on  this  issue,  therefore,  be  it 

Resolved,  That  a  special  committee  of  five  shall  be  elected 
)y  the  National  Committee  to  study  the  liquor  problem  in  all 
ts  aspects,  and  particularly  to  gather  all  available  statistics 
tnd  information  concerning  the  relation  of  the  liquor  traffic 
o  the  welfare  of  the  working  class; 

That  this  committee  report  upon  the  attitude  of  the  Socialist 
>arty  in  the  various  countries  of  the  world,  on  the  liquor  traffic, 
md  an  outline  of  their  experiments  and  policies  on  the  subject; 

That  this  special  committee  shall  prepare  a  detailed  report 
>f  its  findings  for  the  next  meeting  of  the  National  Committee, 
he  same  to  be  sent  to  the  members  of  that  committee  at  least 
>ne  month  before  the  opening  of  the  session. 

16.  Immigration. 


(a)  EXTENT  AND  CAUSES  OF  IMMIGRATION. 


Extract  from  “Poverty,”  by  Robert  Hunter.  Published  by  the 
Macmillan  Company.) 


It  is  amazing-  to  consider  the  extent  of  the  foreign  element  in 
his  country. 

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

Since  the  year  1821  over  twenty  million  immigrants  have  arrived 
n  this  country.  Within  the  last  twenty-three  years  considerably 
ver  half  of  this  number,  or  upwards  of  ten  million  immigrants, 
ave  landed  in  the  United  States. 

A  striking  fact  in  connection  with  the  movement  of  population 
j  the  influence  of  the  profit-seeking  forces  upon  its  volume.  It 
3  stimulated  by  certain  economic  forces  consciously  exercised, 
enerally  speaking,  immigration  is  promoted  by  two  classes:  Large 
mployers  of  labor,  seeking  always  and  everywhere  the  cheapest 
orm  obtainable,  and  the  owners  of  the  transatlantic  steamship 
ompanies. 


Bolton  King,  writing  on  “Italy  Today,”  says  that  in  1896  there 
rere  over  seven  thousand  emigration  agents  in  the  country 
Italy),  and  too  many  of  them  have  speculated  on  the  peasant’s 
fnorance,  giving  false  information  as  to  the  labor  market,  some- 
roes  cheating  him  (the  Italian)  of  the  little  hoard  he  had  taken 
rith  him,  or  deliberately  sending  him  to  a  different  locality  from 
sat  agreed  upon.  These  agencies  in  Europe  are  spread  “like  a 
ast  network,”  having  representatives  in  every  town,  village  and 
amlet  for  the  purpose  of  making  the  ignorant  peasantry  believe 
ibulous  stories  of  wealth  to  be  had  in  America. 


It  should  be  realized  that  the  forces  promoting  immigration  are 
Jlflsh  forces  caring  neither  for  the  welfare  of  the  country  nor  for 
le  welfare  of  the  immigrants. 


The  class  of  large  employers  most  active  in  preventing  the  re¬ 
duction  of  immigration  have  usually  been  those  paying  the  small- 
it  wages.  A  representative  of  the  Southern  Pacific  Railroad,  ap- 
saring  before  the  Committee  of  the  United  States  on  Immigration 
i  1902,  for  the  purpose  of  opposing  restriction,  claimed  that  the 
illroad  was  unable  to  get  sufficient  workmen.  The  Commissioner 
eneral  of  Immigration,  knowing  well  the  wages  and  conditions 
c  railway  workmen,  said,  “Let  it  pay  living  wages  and  it  will 
ive  laborers  enough.”  The  wages  paid  by  the  Southern  Pacific 
?  shown  before  the  same  committee,  were  from  $1.16  to  $1  39  a 
iy,  or,  in  other  terms,  from  $350  to  $425  a  year.  Those  employers 
ho  use  every  means,  fair  or  foul,  to  obtain  an  over-supply  of 
borers,  and,  in  this  way,  to  force  wages  down  to  the  lowest  pos- 
ble  limit,  should  be  classed  among  the  dangerous  elements  of 
iy  country.  This  policy,  pursued  for  many  years  In  the  anthra- 
te  districts  of  Pennsylvania,  caused  violent  disturbances  until 
ie  men  were  organized  in  unions  for  the  purpose  of  limiting  the 


266 


supply  of  laborers  and  of  increasing  wages.  In  order  to  keep 
wages  down  and  to  prevent  the  growth  of  trade  unions,  many  em¬ 
ployers  advocate  unlimited  immigration.  The  reports  to  the  Indus¬ 
trial  Commission  show  that  in  those  districts  where  .there  is  an 
over-supply  of  laborers  of  many  different  nationalities,  it  is  almost 
impossible  to  organize  the  workers  until  suffering  makes  the  men 
realize  the  necessity  of  union,  instead  of  competition,  among  them¬ 
selves.  In  this  way  the  selfish  interests  create  serious  social  prob¬ 
lems  by  promoting  excessive  immigration.” 

And  we  are  presented  yearly  with  an  enormous  number  of  adults 
— this  year  there  will  be  approximately  one  million  immigrants — 
a  large  proportion  of  whom  are  illiterate. 


The  heaviest  burden  of  the  immense  immigration  is,  however, 
not  borne  by  the  state,  which,  after  all,  can,  when  necessary,  afford 
to  bear  even  larger  burdens  of  this  character.  The  real  weight  is 
borne  by  the  poorest  classes  of  our  community  (except  those  in 
the  almshouses);  namely,  the  unskilled  workers.  Unskilled  labor 
is  already  too  plentiful. 


A  surplus  of  laborers  enables  the  meanest  employer  to  oppress 
his  workmen  to  the  very  limit  of  endurance.  If  it  is  to  his  advan¬ 
tage  to  have  short  seasons,  an  over-supply  of  labor  enables  him  to 
push  through  large  contracts  of  work  in  short  periods  of  time, 
leaving  the  workmen  at  other  times  unemployed  and  in  poverty. 
In  the  same  way  that  surplus  labor  enables  the  individual  manu¬ 
facturer  to  supply  his  market  in  a  short  period  of  time,  leaving 
his  plant  and  workmen  idle  at  other  times,  all  manufacturers  are 
enabled  by  surplus  labor  to  supply  sufficient  products  for  the  mar¬ 
ket  in  a  few  years  of  great  business  activity,  'thereby  necessitat¬ 
ing,  periodically,  a  long  season,  sometimes  extending  over  years, 
when  both  plant  and  men  must  be  idle.  Both  the  'Honorable  Car- 
roll  D.  Wright  and  Professor  Richmond  Mayo-Smith  have  shown 
how  important  a  factor  this  over-supply  of  labor  is  in  creating 
industrial  depressions. 


Immigration  presents  for  our  serious  consideration  a  formidable 
array  of  dangers.  It  is  unnecessary  to  summarize  the  facts  and 
the  arguments  which  have  been  given.  These  are  the  two  thing* 
which,  of  all  that  hiave  been  stated,  seem  the  most  important;  thie 
likelihood  of  race  annihilation  and  the  possible  degeneration  of 
even  'the  succeeding  American  type.. 


Our  race  may  be  supplanted  by  another — by  an  Asiatic  one,  for 
instance — and  not  because  it  is  better  so  nor  because  it  is  for  the 
world’s  good.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  in  order  that  the  individuals 
interested  in  steamships  may  be  benefited  and  in  order  that  the 
employers  may  have  cheaper  labor.  These  selfish  forces  may  be 
disguised,  but  they  are  there  and  they  are  active. 


Immigration  Into  the  United  States  for  Fiscal  Year  Ended 

June  30. 

(From  the  World  Almanac  and  Encyclopedia,  1914,  page  180.) 

Total  Total  Total  Total 

Tear  Im’gr’nts.  Year  Im’gr’nts.  Year  Im’gr’nts.  Year  Im’gr’nts. 

1900.  .  448,572  1904..  812,870  1908..  782,870  1911..  878,587 

1901 .  .487,918  1905.  .1,027,421  1909..  751,786  1912..  838,172 

1902  .648,743  1906  ..  1,100,735  1910  ..  1,041,570  1913  ..  1,197,892 

1903.  .857,046  1907  ..  1,285,349 

Total  from  1824  to  1913  inclusive,  $30,808,944.  (For  yearly 
totals  from  1824  to  1899,  see  1913  Almanac,  page  185.)  From 
1789  to  1882,  estimated,  266,038. 

The  reported  occupation  of  immigrants  arriving  during  the 
fiscal  year  1913  were  as  follows:  Laborers,  220,992;  servants 
140,218;  farm  laborers,  320,105;  tailors,  22,934;  merchants  and 
dealers,  13,919;  carpenters  and  jobbers,  15,035;  shoemakers, 
11,578;  clerks  and  accountants,  14,025;  mariners,  4,979;  miners 
9,510.  The  number  of  professional  immigrants  (including  911 
actors,  1,917  engineers,  1,254  musicians  and  2,389  teachers)  was 
13,469;  of  skilled  laborers,  160,108;  other  miscellaneous  (includ¬ 
ing  unskilled),  14,396;  no  occupation  (including  women  and 
children),  297,188. 

(b)  IMMIGRATION  BY  COUNTRIES  IN  FISCAL  YEARS 
1912  AND  1913. 


(From  World  Almanac  and  Encyclopedia,  1914,  page  180.) 


1912. 

178,882 

4.169 


Countries. 

Austria-Hungary  . 

Belgium  .  .  , 

Bulgaria,  Servia  and  Montenegro .  «  iqi 

Denmark  . . . '•  •  • 

France,  including  Corsica  .  700 

German  Empire . . . 


1913 

254,82 

7,405 

1,755 

6,47 

9,675 

34,822 


(Continued) 


267 


(b) 


IMMIGRATION  BY  COUNTRIES  IN  FISCAL  YEARS 
1912  AND  1913. 

Countries  .  1912.  1913 

Greece  .  21,449  22,817 

Italy,  including:  Sicily  and  Sardinia . 157,134  265,542 

Netherlands  .  6,619  6,902 

Norway  .  8,675  8,587 

Portugal,  incl.  Cape  Verde  and  Azores  Islands.  . . .  10,230  14,171 

Roumania  .  1,997  2,156 

Russian  Empire  and  Finland  . 162,395  291,040 

Spain,  including  Canary  and  Balearic  Islands....  6,327  6,167 

Sweden  . . .  12,688  17,202 

Switzerland  . 3,505  4,104 

Turkey  in  Europe  .  14,481  14,128 

England  .  •• .  40,408  43,363 

Ireland  .  25,879  27,876 

Scotland  .  14,578  14,220 

Wales  .  21.62  2,745 

Other  Europe  .  243  371 

Total  Europe  . 

China  . 1,765 

Japan  . . .  •  • . 

India  . 

Turkey  in  Asia .  12,788 

Other  Asia  . . 

Total  Asia . 

Africa  . 1,009 

Australia,  Tasmania  and  New  Zealand . 

Pacific  Islands,  not  specified  . 

British  North  America  . 55,990 

Central  America  . 1,242 

Mexico  . 

South  Am'erica  . 

West  Indies  . 12,467 

Other  countries  . 

Grand  total  . 838,172  1,197,892 

17.  Suppression  of  the  Freedom  of  Speech  and  of  the 

Press. 


718,875 

1,055,855 

1,765 

2,103 

6,114 

8,281 

175 

179 

12,788 

23,955 

607 

838 

21,449 

35,358 

1,009 

1,409 

794 

1,229 

104 

111 

55,990 

73,802 

1,242 

1,478 

23,238 

11,926 

2,989 

12,467 

4, <248 

12,458 

15 

23 

(a)  HOW  THEY  STOLE  HAMPTON’S  MAGAZINE. 


Preface  to  “Stories  of  the  Great  Railroads,”  from  “Business:  the 
Heart  of  the  Nation,”  by  Charles  Edward  Russell. 

(John  Lane  Company,  Publishers,  New  York.) 

Most  of  the  matter  in  this  book  originally  appeared  in 
Hampton’s  Magazine  in  the  form  of  separate  articles. 

After  the  manuscript  of  Chapter  III  had  been  taken  to  the 
magazine  office,  before  there  had  been  any  publication,  and 
when  the  article,  in  fact,  had  advanced  no  farther  than  the  proof 
stage,  I  received  a  letter  from  a  railroad  agent  in  a  western  city 
displaying  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  article,  attempting 
to  refute  some  of  its  statements  and  urging  me  not  to  print 
them. 

.  Again,  while  the  chapter  on  “Death  Avenue”  was  lying  at 
the  office  in  proofs,  and  two  weeks  before  the  magazine  that 
contained  it  had  been  made  up,  a  gentleman  declaring  himself 
to  be  a  representative  of  the  New  York  Central  Railroad  and 
icnown  in  the  office  to  be  such,  called  with  the  information  that 
he  knew  the  nature  and  scope  of  the  article  the  magazine  in- 
:ended  to  publish  about  the  New  York  Central,  and  he  plainly 
intimated  that  unless  it  was  suppressed  the  railroad  company 
would  withdraw  all  its  advertising  from  Hampton’s.  The  artiele 
was  published  and  railroad  advertising  was  accordingly  with- 
Irawn. 

About  two  weeks  before  the  publication  of  Chapter  XIII,  and 
while  it,  too,  had  advanced  no  farther  than  the  proof  stage,  there 
;ame  to  the  office  of  the  magazine  a  gentleman  who  introduced 
limself  as  coming  from  Mr.  Charles  S.  Mellen,  president  of  the 
Mew  York,  New  Haven  and  Hartford  Railroad  Company,  which 
s  made  the  subject  of  that  chapter.  He  said  that  Mr.  Mellen 
mderstood  that  an  article  attacking  the  railroad  company  was 


268 


about  to  be  published  in  Hampton’s;  that  it  was,  as  he  expressed 
it,  “full  of  lies,”  and  he  came  to  warn  the  editor  not  to  publish 
any  such  matter.  In  describing  the  article,  he  showed  such 
familiarity  with  it  as  a  man  could  hardly  have  unless  he  had 
read  it,  although  Mr.  Hampton  had  believed  that  no  one  outside 
of  the  office  (except  myself)  knew  of  the  existence  of  the  article. 

Proofs  of  the  matter  were  now  produced  and  the  caller 
requested  to  indicate  which  of  the  statements  were  “lies.”  Each 
important  sentence  was  read  to  him  separately,  and  he  was 
asked  whether  it  were  true  or  false.  In  every  instance  except 
four  he  was  obliged  to  admit  that  it  was  true.  The  four  instances 
to  the  contrary  were  either  trivial  or  they  were  matters  that 
Mr.  Hampton  himself  knew  to  be  accurately  stated. 

He  had  told  his  caller  at  the  beginning  of  the  interview  that 
he  would  change  or  omit  every  statement  in  the  article  that 
could  be  shown  to  be  false.  After  spending  the  better  part  of  the 
day  in  careful  consideration  of  the  matter  sentence  by  sentence, 
there  appeared  to  be  nothing  material  to  change.  9 

Nevertheless,  the  visitor  demanded  that  the  article  be  not 
printed.  He  said  that  if  it  should  be,  the  financial  powers  back 
of  the  New  Haven  railroad  would  ruin  the  magazine  and  Mr 
Hampton. 

The  article  was  printed  in  the  issue  of  November,  1910. 
From  that  time  Mr.  Hampton  found  it  increasingly  difficult  to 
get  any  money  at  the  banks.  Even  when  he  offered  paper  of 
the  best  kind,  endorsed  by  four  men  of  wealth  who  had  no 
trouble  about  borrowing  money  on  their  own  account,  the  banks 
refused  him  all  accommodation.  Twenty-one  banks  and  trust 
companies  were  approached  with  the  same  result.  More  than 
one  declared  a  willingness  to  accept  the  paper  for  any  other 
purpose  than  Hampton’s  Magazine.  Several  times  the  paper 
was  accepted  and  subsequently,  at  some  mysterious  signal, 
rejected.  The  result  was  that  Mr.  Hampton  was  ruined  accord¬ 
ing  to  prediction  and  his  magazine  was  swept  out  of  his  hands. 

It  had  a  circulation  of  more  than  400,000  and  a  very  large 
advertising  business,  and  not  a  bank  in  New  York  would 
advance  to  it  one  dollar. 

Meantime,  spies  had  made  their  way  into  the  business  office 
of' the  magazine,  copied  the  list  of  stockholders,  and  these  were 
besieged  with  circulars  intimating  that  the  concern  was  about  to 
fail  and  they  had  better  protect  themselves,  with  the  inevitable 
result  of  destroying  the  magazine’s  credit  and  bringing  upon 
it  a  swarm  of  frightened  stockholders. 

These  are  the  facts. 

The  author  earnestly  desires  opinions  upon  them  from  un¬ 
prejudiced  sources — and  others.  They  seem  to  him  to  represenl 
a  condition  incompatible  with  any  assertion  of  a  free  press  it 
America,  and  a  state  of  espionage  by  the  corporations  that 
deserves  the  thoughtful  attention  of  every  citizen. 

(b)  THE  NEWSPAPER  AND  THE  TRUST. 

(From  “The  Beast,”  by  Judge  Ben  B.  Lindsey.  Published  bj 
Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.) 

It  has  been  my  experience  that  there  are  no  agents  of  refortr 
as  powerful  in  our  American  communities  as  the  newspapers 
They  are  the  very  eyes  of  the  people.  What  they  refuse  to  see 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  discover  to  the  public.  What  the} 
desire  to  see  wrongly,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  show  in  its  tru« 
face.  And  this  is  well  known  to  the  Beast.  It  not  only  use: 
the  editorial  pages;  it  applies  its  influence  to  the  reports  of  thi 
news  columns;  it  supplements  editorial  arguments  and  abus« 
with  misrepresentations,  with  falsifications  and  with  downrigh 
inventions  in  the  reporters’  room. 


(c)  FREE  SPEECH  IN  COLORADO. 

(From  “The  Beast/’  by  Judge  Ben  B.  Lindsey.) 

There  was  nothing  for  us  now  but  an  independent  campaign. 
We  tried  to  raise  a  campaign  fund.  My  friends  went  first 
among  the  business  men — and  found  their  pockets  buttoned. 
All  our  efforts  ended  in  raising  only  $450.  The  business  men 
said  that  I  was  “the  man  for  the  place/’  but  that  I  was  foolish 
to  attack  the  corporations,  and  that  it  was  dangerous  for  a  man 
of  business  to  support  me.  For  the  same  reason,  many  of  them 
refused  even  to  sign  a  petition  to  nominate  me. 

I  then  tried  the  ministers.  I  sent  a  letter  to  every  preacher 
in  Denver — about  one  hundred  and  fifty  in  all — explaining  my 
difficulties  and  asking  them  to  meet  me  in  the  Juvenile  Court 
on  an  appointed  evening.  Four  or  five  sent  letters  of  regret. 
Two  or  three  came  to  the  meeting.  The  others  were  silent. 
Later  the  young  men  of  the  Christian  Citizenship  Union  sent  a 
similar  letter  to  the  ministers,  through  their  president,  Mr. 
Harry  G.  Fisher.  The  same  ministers  came. 

I  talked  to  a  number  of  school  teachers  who  came  to  my 
chamber  privately  to  promise  me  their  support.  They  told  me 
that  many  teachers  were  eager  to  help,  but  dared  mot  make 
themselves  conspicuous  because  it  was  known  that  the  First 
National  Bank  and  the  Moffat-Evans-Cheesman  interests  con¬ 
trolled  the  School  Board;  and  the  teachers  were  afraid  of  losing 
their  positions. 

I  tried  the  leader  of  the  Woman’s  Club.  One  able  and 
wealthy  woman,  of  whose  support  I  was  certain,  confessed  that 
she  could  not  even  sign  my  nominating  petition.  She  said  that 
if  any  woman  of  wealth  wished  to  take  any  part  in  such  a  fight, 
she  would  have  to  invest  her  money  in  another  state.  Her 
investments  were  in  Denver,  and  if  she  were  to  champion  our 
cause  publicly,  the  corporations  would  make  her  suffer  for  it 
ruinously.  Another  leader  told  me:  “You  know,  Judge  Lind¬ 
sey,  I  would  like  to  help  you,  but  my  husband  is  in  business, 
and  his  business  depends  largely  upon  the  good  will  of  Mr. 
Evans.  He  has  large  contracts  with  the  county.  He  has  told 
me  that  I  must  not  under  any  conditions  attend  your  meetings 
or  do  anything  like  that.  It  would  be  very  offensive  to  Mr. 
Evans  and  the  business  men.”  Another  said:  “I  know  you  are 
right,  Judge,  but  my  husband  is  in  the  City  Hall.  Some  day 
I  hope  he  will  be  free— so  that  I  may  be  free— but  he  isn’t  now.” 
I  went  at  the  beginning  of  the  campaign  to  practically  all  the 
women’s  suffrage  leaders  who,  at  national  meetings  had  been 
telling  how  much  the  women  had  done  for  the  Juvenile  Court 
in  Denver;  and  none  of  them  dared  help  me.  Women  like  Mrs. 
Mary  C.  Bradford  and  Mrs.  Lafferty  (who  was  a  member  of  the 
last  legislature)  took  the  platform  against  me  and  supported  the 
System  in  its  attempt  to  “get”  the  Juvenile  Court.  Mrs.  Scott 
Saxton  of  the  Woman’s  Club  stood  practically  alone  in  her  open 
public  support  of  our  anti-corporation  campaign. 

(d)  WENDELL  PHILLIPS  ON  FREE  SPEECH. 

No  matter  whose  lips  that  speak,  they  must  be  free  and 
ungagged.  Let  us  believe  that  the  whole  truth  can  never  do 
harm  to  the  whole  of  virtue;  and  remember  that  in  order  to  get 
the  whole  truth  you  must  allow  every  man,  right  or  wrong, 
freely  to  utter  his  conscience  and  to  protect  him  in  so  doing. 
Entire  unshackled  freedom  for  every  man’s  life,  no  matter  what 
his  doctrine — the  safety  of  free  disdussion,  no  matter  how  wide 
its  range.  The  community  which  dares  not  protect  its  humblest 
and  most  hated  member  in  the  free  utterance  of  his  opinions,  no 
matter  how  false  or  hateful,  is  only  a  gang  of  slaves.— Wendell 
Phillips. 


270 


18.  War  and  Militarism. 

(From  Statistical  Abstract  of  the  United  States,  1912,  page  714.) 
(a)  REGULAR  ARMY,  PHILIPPINE  SCOUTS  AND 
MILITIA;  ORGANIZED  STRENGTH,  YEARS 
ENDED  JUNE  30,  1909,  TO  1912. 


*3  § 


1909 

Regular  army  4,048  74,665 

Philippine 

scou'ts .  160  5,586 

Militia  . 8,975  109,951 


G  c 

o  H 

1910 

4,273  70,893 


G 

o 

1911 


-o  c 
<o  a> 

C 


*  g 


1912 


166  5,386 

9,155  110,505 


4,281  73,454  4,470  81,331 

179  5,401  180  5,480 

9,172  108,816  9,142  112,710 


(b)  EXPENDITURE  FOR  ARMY,  NAVY  AND  PENSIONS 
AND  NUMBER  OF  PENSIONERS. 


(From  Statistical  Abstract,  1912,  page  744.) 

Total 
number  of 


War 

NaVy 

Pensions 

pensioners 

1S00. . 

.  .$134,774,768 

$  55,953,078 

$140,877,316 

993,529 

1901.  . 

..  144,615,697 

60,506,978 

139,323,622 

997,735 

1902.  . 

.'.  112,272,216 

67,803,128 

138,488,560 

999,446 

1903.  . 

..  118,619,520 

82,618,034 

138,425,646 

996,545 

1904.  . 

..  115,035,411 

102,956,102 

142,559,266 

994,762 

1905.  . 

..  122,175,074 

117,550,308 

141,773,965 

998,441 

1906. . 

..  117,946,692 

110,474,264 

141,034,562 

985,971 

1907.  . 

.  .  122,576,465 

97,128,469 

139,309,514 

967,371 

1908.  . 

..  137,746,524 

118,037,097 

153,892,467 

951,687 

1909. . 

..  161,067,462 

115,546,011 

161,710,367 

946,194 

1910.  . 

.  .  155,911,706 

123,173,717 

160,696,416 

921,083 

1911.  . 

.  .  160,135,976 

119,937,644 

157,980,575 

892,098 

1912.  . 

.  .  148,795,422 

135,591,956 

153,590,456- 

860,294 

(c)  TOTAL  ANNUAL  EXPENDITURE  BY  THE  GOV¬ 
ERNMENT  FOR  ARMY,  NAVY  AND  PENSIONS. 


(Compiled  from  the  Statistical  Abstract  for  1912.) 


Army  .  . 
Navy  . .  . 
Pensions 


$148,795,421 

135,591,956 

153,590,456 


Total  . _. . $437,977,834 

(d)  ESTIMATE  OF  ACTUAL  COST  OF  MILITARISM. 

Nor  can  this  be  regarded  as  the  total  cost  of  militarism. 
To  this  must  be  added  the  interest  on  our  war  debt,  the  de¬ 
preciation  of  fighting  equipment  and  the  loss  of  labor  power 
due  to  the  withdrawing  of  so  many  able  bodied  men  from  pro¬ 
ductive  labor.  This  last  loss  especially  is  very  great. 

Adding  together  the  number  of  officers  and  enlisted  men 
in  1909  we  get  260,419  men  withdrawn  by  the  army  and  navy 
from  productive  work.  According  to  United  States  Census 
(Statistical  Abstract  of  United. States,  1910,  page  196),  the  value 
of  products  manufactured  in  1905  waJs  $14, '802, 147, 087;  the 
number  of  laborers  was  5,470,321,  and  the  number  of  salaried 
officials,  clerks,  etc.,  was  519,751;  making  the  total  number 
employed  in  creating  this  product  5,990,072.  Dividing  the  value 
of  the  product  by  this  number,  we  get  $2,471,  the  average  prod¬ 
uct  of  each  man.  Multiply  this  number  by  total  number  of  men 
in  army  and  navy,  and  you  get  $643,475,349,  which  represents  the 
wealth  these  men  would  create  if  they  were  engaged  in  pro¬ 
ductive  labor,  and  therefore  the  loss  the  United  States  sustains, 
in  that  respect  alone,  through  our  army  and  navy. 

The  total  loss  to  the  nation  as  a  result  of  militarism  can, 
therefore,  be  estimated  as  fallows: 


Army,  Navy  and  Pensions  . 

Interest  on  public  war-debt . 

Depreciation  of  fighting-  equipment 
Doss  of  labor-power  . 


$  437,000,000 
20,000,000 
10,000,000 
643,000,000 


* 


Total  cost  of  militarism 


$1,110,000,000 


271 

(e)  MORE  THAN  HALF  OF  THE  TOTAL  GOVERN¬ 
MENT  EXPENDITURES  FOR  WAR. 

(From  a  speech  of  Hon.  L.  F.  Livingston  of  Georgia  in  the 
House  of  Representatives,  Saturday,  June  25,  1910.) 

The  appropriations  made  by  Congress  at  this 
$1,027,133,446.44.  Again  the  high-water  mark  of  a  billion  dollar* 
of’  expenditures  Is  passed.  #  .  *  • 

This  enormous  sum  of  public  expenditures  .nearly ’  $1.100 ,000, 000. 
fnr  which  this  Congress  is  responsible,  includes  $94,440,567. 5o  for 
the  Army;  $131,350,854.38  for  the  Navy;  $ 5 ,61 7,200  for  f ortlfica ti ons^ 
*18^6  249  87  for  the  Military  Academy,  and  $155,758,000  for  tna 
payments'  of  pensions;  in  all  $389,022,871.80  outright  that  is  ear¬ 
ned  in  supply  bills  devoted  wholly  to  making  provisions  for  the 
military  side  of  our  government.  In  addition  there  is  carried  un- 
der  permanlnfannufl  appropriations  $22  195  000  for  interest  and 
S60  935  000  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  sinking  fund  obllga 
tions  on  our  outstanding  public  debt,  substantially  all  of  which 
represents  war  expenditures,  $4,000,000  for  arming  and  equipping 
the  militia,  and  $2,120,000  for  various  objects  pertaining  to  the 
Navv  the Organization  of  the  War  and  Navy  Departments,  or  of  - 
fires  ’at  Washington,  together  with  the  salaries  of  the  Pensi  n 
Bureau  amount  to  $4,588,718  more,  and  in  addition  various  sum* 
are  carnSTin  the  sundry  civil  act  for  soldiers"  homes,  armories  and 
arsenals  and  other  military  purposes  amounting  to  $8, 226, 810 
These  sums  together  make  $102,065,028,  and  added  to  the  sum  total 
nftbe  fi^fi  general  appropriation  bids  that  appropriate  solely  for 
elpenditu?ef delating  to  war,  we  ascertain  that  of  all  that  vait 
sJm?arr^  in  the  dfrect  appropriations  made  at  this  session  there 
m  ooted  to  purposes  of  war,  and  its  pomp  and  splendor,  and  to 
its^direct  mournful  and  tragic  results  *491,087,899.80,  or  con*tdejr- 
ably  more  Sian  one-half  of  all  that  Is  appropHated  for  every  cob- 
ceivable  ordinary  operating  expenee  of  government  for  the  next 

^T^P^tual  expenditures,  as  they  have  been  ascertained  each 

yea?  fo?  some  Ume  past,  it  may  be  added  show  that  the  military 

•peo-ple-,or  purposes  purely 

(f)  THE  COST  OF  A  BATTLESHIP. 


(From  “War  and  Waste,”  by  David  Starr  Jordan,  President, 

Leland  Stanford,  Jr.,  University,  pages  284-285.  Double¬ 
day,  Page  &  Co.,  Publishers.) 

By  all  means  let  us  popularize  the  navy.  It  is  our  navy;  we 
have  paid  for  it,  and  it  is  for  our  people  to  do  what  they  please 
with  it  “For,  after  all,  this  is  the  people's  country.  And 
perhaps  we  could  bring  it  nearer  to  our  hearts  and  thoughts 
if  we  should  paint  on  the  white  side  of  each  ship,  its  cost,  in 
taxes,  in  the  blood  and  sweat  of  workingmen,  in  the  anguish 
of  “the  Man  Lowest  Down.” 

There  is  the  good  ship  North  Dakota,  for  example.  Her 
cost  is  almost  exactly  the  year’s  net  savings  of  the  prosperous 
state  for  which  she  is  named.  There  are  the  fine  dreadnaughts, 
which  fear  nothing  while  the  nation  is  in  its  senses  and  in  war 
nothing  but  a  torpedo  boat  or  an  aerobomb  It  would  please 
the  workingman  to  know  that  his  wages  for  20,000  years  ($528 
per  year,  on  the  average)  would  purchase  a  ship  of  this  kind, 
and  that  the  wages  of  1,600  of  his  fellows  each  year  would  keep 
it  trim  and  afloat. 


(g)  THE  WASTE  OF  WAR. 

(Compiled  from  authentic  sources  by  Robert  G.  Root,  Secre' 
tary-Treasurer,  California  Peace  Societies.) 


1.  — u.  S.  spent  2^4  cents  on  each  acre  of  forest, 

1911,  total  . 

Owing  to  lack  of  protection,  annual  forest  lire 
losses  are  (Chief  Forester,  Nat.  Geog. 
Mag.,  1912)  . 

2.  — U.  S.  spent  o,n  preparation  for  war  In  1911.. 

A  per  capita  tax  of  $3.07  (World  Peace 
Foundation).  California’s  share  of  the  total 

3.  — XJ.  S.  spends  nearly  70%  of  her  yearly  revenue 

on  wars,  past  and  future,  a  per  capita 
tax  of  . 


$5,335,181.*# 

$100,000,000.## 

$283,086,000.0# 

$8,074,961.0# 


$5.00 


272 


4.  — U.  S.  expends  for  one  shot  from  a  13-Inch  gun  >1.050.00 

Plus  the  damage  to  the  gun  of  >555 .  >1,605.00 

This  exceeds  average  salary  of  teachers  in 
California,  1012:  Wome'n,  $726.94;  Men 
>1,010.18;  high  school,  $1,048.66  and  $1,527.92. 

A  college  education  in  each  cannon  boom! 

5.  — U.  S.  pays  for  a  13-inch  cannon  (government 

figures)  .  >55,569.00 

For  latest,  most  improved  gun — to  kill  men  >124,234.00 

Compare  with  cost  of  many  churches  or  high 


school  buildings.  Compare  the  cost  of  sav¬ 
ing  life  on  Panama  Canal  Zone,  $2.43,  with 
the  cost  of  killing  a  man  in  war,  $15,000. 
(Outlook,  Feb.  1,  1913,  p.  242). 


6. — Latest  super-dreadnaught  of  U.  >S.  is  to  cost  >15,000,000.00 
Each  year’s  expense  to  run  it  (junk  in  15 

years)  .  >1,000,000.00 

Compare  with  value  of  fifteen  merchants’ 
vessels  for  Pacific-Atlantic  coast  trade 

costing  less  than  .  >16,000,000.00 

Or,  compare  the  cost  of  6,000  new  homes 

at  $2,500  . .  .  >15,000,000.0® 

Or,  compare  with  appropriation  to  prevent 

floods  on  the  Mississippi,  1912  (see  No.  10)  $15,250,000.00 

Or,  compare  with  cost  of  Roosevelt  Dam,  Ari¬ 
zona,  which  will  irrigate  240,000  acres;  or 
ten  acres  and  a  living  for  24,000  families, 
or  120,000  people,  while  the  dreadnaught 
supports  only  1,000  to  1,200  people .  >9,000,000.00 


7.  — The  $15,000,000  “invested”  in  only  one  big 

battleship  (by  vested  interests)  would 
build  and  equip  Los  Angeles  Polytechnic 
High  School  27  times;  Oakland’s  new  Poly¬ 
technic  High  School  25  times;  the  Univer¬ 
sity  of  California,  at  Berkeley,  valued  at 
$4,385,632  (1912),  nearly  3 y2  times. 

8.  — U.  S.  Secretary  of  War  says  only  8  of  the  49 

army  posts  in  the  U.  S.  are  of  any  practical 
value,  yet  millions  are  appropriated  for 
maintaining  the  useless  ones. 

9.  — U.  S.  Secretary  of  Navy  states  (1911)  that  U.  S. 

has  11  navy  yards,  Great  Britain  6,  Franc© 

5,,  and  Germany  3. 

10.  — Assessed  value  of  all  property  in  California, 

1912  .  >2,922,000,000.00 

U.  S.  has  spent,  since  1899,  on  war  prepara¬ 
tions  ., .  >3,000,000,000.0/0 

And  neglected  her  forest  reserves,  her  arid 
lands,  her  navigable  rivers  and  commercial 
harbors;  has  failed  to  build  needed  public 
roads,  public  buildings,  and  also  failed  to 
stamp  out  many  preventable  diseases 
among  animals  and  men. 

She  has  allowed  500  people  to  drown,  100,000 
to  become  beggars  of  bread,  and  let  500,000 
American  citizens  be  driven  from  itheir 
homes  by  preventable  floods  in  1912  alone, 
because  she  wasted  her  revenues  on  prep¬ 
arations  to  k’ll  men. 

11.  — The  war  debt  of  the  nations,  says  Dr.  David 

Starr  Jordan,  is  nearly  . $37,000,000,000.00 

Accumulated  since  1700  A.  D.,  just  in  killing 
men  (14,000,000  men  killed  in  war,  1700 
to  1912). 

(h)  SOCIALISTS  AND  WAR. 

What  the  Socialists  Did  in  Norway  and  Sweden  in  1905  to 
Prevent  a  War. 

The  countries  of  Norway  and  Sweden  had  always  had  sepa¬ 
rate  parliamentary  bodies,  separate  systems  of  taxations  and 
practically  separate  governments,  except  that  the  King  of 
Sweden  was  also  the  King  of  Norway. 

In  1905  the  people  of  Norway,  led  by  the  governing  class, 
rebelled  against  this  partial  subjection  to  Sweden  and  demanded 
that  they  be  freed  from  the  rule  of  the  Swedish  king.  The 
Swedish  king  and  parliament  refused  to  grant  their  demands, 
and  immediately  became  the  aggressors  in  a  violent  dissension. 
Finally  the  Swedish  authorities  declared  war;  and  both  countries 
commenced  to  mobolize  their  armies,  following  the  usual  con¬ 
scription  system,  by  which  the  rank  and  file  of  the  workingmen 
and  common  people  were  immediately  drawn  into  the  armies. 

Almost  simultaneously  with  the  attempt  to  gather  the  armies, 
the  Socialist  party  in  both  countries  started  a  vigorous  agitation 
to  get  the  workers  of  both  countries  to  refuse  to  fight  and  kill 


273 


ach  other,  in  the  interests  of  the  governing  clasises.  Enormous 
lass  meetings  were  held  in  all  possible  places,  and  a  huge  pa- 
ade  of  protest  marched  on  the  palace  of  the  Swedish  king  and  the 
ouse  of  the  Swedish  parliament.  The  workers  were  constantly 
sisembled  in  large  and  small  groups,  and  those  who  lived  near 
he  border  line  frequently  passed  over  into  the  other  country  to 
oin  their  fellow  workers  in  picnics  and  meetings,  to  express 
heir  feelings  of  fraternity. 

The  movement  finally  amounted  to  a  virtual  strike  in  the 
>ody  of  the  conscripted  army,  and  the  members  of  the  govern- 
ng  class  in  both  countries  saw  that  if  they  were  to  carry  on  a 
var,  they  would  have  to  do  the  actual  fighting  against  each 
>ther.  This  they  would  not  do. 

The  war  was  entirely  averted. 

The  Morocco  Affair. 

(July-August,  1911.) 

The  Vorwarts,  July  4,  as  soon  as  the  Morocco  affair  broke 
)ut,  urged  the  members  of  the  Socialist  party  to  protest  against 
:he  present  election  system  and  demanded  in  its  manifesto  to  pro- 
:est  likewise  against  “the  methods  of  jingoes  who  wish  the  citi¬ 
zens’  blood  for  the  capitalistic  interests  in  Morocco  and  against 
mperialism,  which  cause  the  military  dangers  to  hover  over  the 
German  nation.” 

July  7,  the  French  Socialist,  Jean  Jaures,  wrote  to  Vorwarts 
suggesting  calmness  and  demanding  energetic  actions  on  the 
part  of  the  European  proletariat.  A  few  days  later  his  paper, 
‘Humanite,”  published  a  resolution  of  the  executive  committee 
of  the  French  Socialist  party  to  the  effedt  that  the  French 
section  of  the  International  is  ready  to  carry  out  the  resolution 
of  the  last  International  Congress.  The  resolution  of  the  com¬ 
mittee  ends  with  the  statement,  “Morocco  is  not  worth  the 
bones  of  the  French  workingman.”  The  German  Vorwarts  upon 
the  receipt  of  this  resolution  responded  with  the  approval  of  the 
executive  committee  of  the  German  Social  Democratic  party, 
saying  that  the  German  party  accepted  the  initiative  of  the 
French  comrades  with  the  warmest  sympathy  and  satisfaction, 
and  adding:  “Morocco  is  worth  the  bones  of  neither  the  French 
nor  German  workmen.” 

July  13  the  Socialist  demonstration  against  the  agitation  for 
war  took  place  in  Paris.  A  delegate  of  the  German  party  was 
present.  He  assured  the  French  Socialists  that  the  German 
working  class  will  resent  the  war  with  the  same  energy  as  the 
French  comrades  do.  On  the  occasion  of  the  visit  of  the  French 
trade  unionsists  in  Berlin  at  the  end  of  July,  a  demonstration 
meeting  was  held  at  which  a  mutual  solidarity  of  the  German 
and  French  workingmen  -and  a  demand  for  peace  were  empha¬ 
sized. 

July  29  the  Spanish  Socialist,  Pablo  Iglesas,  notified  the 
German  Socialists  that  the  Spanish  Socialist  party  and  labor 
organizations  had,  together  with  the  Republicans,  arranged  a 
protest  demonstration. 

August  9  the  German  executive  committee  issued  a  mani¬ 
festo  to  the  members. 

August  17  an  international  peace  demonstration,  attended  by 
several  thousand  workingmen,  took  place  in  London,  arranged 
in  co-operation  between  the  executive  committee  of  the  Labor 
party,  the  Federation  of  Trade  Unions  and  Trade  Union  Con¬ 
gresses.  The  meeting  was  addressed  by  Comrades  Keir  Hardie, 
R.  McDonald  and  Hyndman.  French  guests  participated  as 
speakers.  There  was  a  resolution  passed  calling  attention  to 
the  endangering  of  the  world  peace  through  the  exploitation 
of  home  and  foreign  markets  and  promising  solemnly  to  pre¬ 
vent  the  breaking  out  of  war.  The  International  Congress  of 


m,- 

'  _  / 


274 

Miners  has  likewise  spoken  for  peace.  Subsequently,  Comrade 
McDonald  made  the  following  remarks  in  the  English  parlia¬ 
ment: 

“The  House  knows  the  forces,  the  organization  and  the 
movement  in  Europe  with  which  we  English  Socialists  are  con¬ 
nected;  that  so  long  as  there  is  a  general  federation  of  labor 
or  a  labor  party  they  will  all  work  for  peace.  The  International 
Miners’  Congress  has  just  passed  a  similar  resolution,  that  if 
peace  should  be  interrupted  at  the  present  moment,  we  will 
nevertheless  stand  by  it.  We  appreciate  the  deep  seriousness 
of  the  situation.  We  also  know  that  it  is  very  useful  for  the 
ruling  classes  to  learn  the  story  of  an  organization  which  will 
energetically  support  the  peace  in  evil  as  well  as  in  good  times.” 

When  Lloyd  George  delivered  his  belligerent  speech  in 
Mansion  Hall,  Comrade  Bebel,  German  delegate  to  the  Inter¬ 
national  Bureau,  urged  a  conference  of  the  bureau.  The  Ger¬ 
man  Socialist  party  arranged  demonstrations  all  throughout 
Germany.  In  Berlin  itself,  ten  mass  meetings  were  held  Sep¬ 
tember  3,  the  anniversary  of  “patriotic”  Sedan.  These  were 
attended  by  one-half  million  organized  workingmen.  The  fol¬ 
lowing  resolution  was  unanimously  adopted: 

“The  meeting  protests  with  the  utmost  energy  against  the 
latest  course  of  the  imperialistic  policy  of  Germany.  It  is 
against  the  permanent  settlement  in  Morocco,  as  well  as  against 
the  increase  of  the  German  colonial  possessions  through  un¬ 
worthy  bargaining.  The  meeting  gives  its  conviction  that 
neither  the  German  working  class  nor  the  German  commerce 
and  industry  would  be  profited  by  the  new  colonial  acquisitions; 
that  on  the  contrary,  the  burden  of  the  people  would  be  in¬ 
creased  and  an  unforseen  war-danger  created. 

“The  meeting  turns  with  utmost  indignation  against  capi¬ 
talistic  circles  who  induced  by  selfish  purposes  utilize  the 
country’s  diplomacy  to  engage  Germany  in  useless  war. 

“The  meeting  declares  in  the  name  of  the  workingmen  that 
they  would  oppose  all  the  criminal  attempts  which  were  directed 
towards  bringing  on  a  war,  bloodshed  and  destruction  of  the 
common  welfare  among  the  nations,  with  all  the  means  at  their 
disposal. 

“The  meeting  furthermore  declares  its  displeasure  with  the 
method  of  the  German  government  in  leaving  all  important  and 
portentous  foreign  affairs  in  the  hands  of  a  small  number  of 
diplomatists,  thus  fully  eliminating  the  true  representative  body 
of  the  people.  The  meeting  demands  that  the  people  and  their 
parliamentary  representatives  have  the  right  to  decide  all  mat¬ 
ters  that  concern  them,  that  the  diplomatic  intrigues  and  abso¬ 
lute  despotism  should  not  determine  the  destiny  of  Germany. 

“The  meeting  irrevocably  stands  by  the  demands  of  the  In¬ 
ternational  Solidarity,  and  allies  itself  with  the  peace  demon¬ 
stration  of  the  French  and  English  workingmen.” 

The  effect  of  this  demonstration  on  the  future  development 
of  the  Morocco  controversy  can  not  be  sufficiently  estimated. 
Not  only  the  foreign  comrades  have  been  strengthened  in  their 
belief  regarding  the  international  solidarity  of  the  workingmen, 
but  the  governments  of  the  involved  nations  were  likewise 
brought  into  a  more  reasonable  and  receptive  frame  of  mind. 
International  peace  was  then  assured  and  the  Morocco  con¬ 
troversy  peacefully  settled. 

(i)  WHAT  WAR  COSTS  IN  HUMAN  LIFE. 

(From  “War — What  For?”  by  George  R.  Kirkpatrirk,  pages 

49,  50,  52.) 

The  hot,  red  flood  gushing  from  the  torn  veins  of  the  work¬ 
ing  class,  seduced  or  forced  to  attend  “Death’s  feast,”  to 


275 


laughter  and  be  slaughtered,  in  little  more  than  one  brief 
.undred  recent  years  may  be  measured  thus: 

n  the  French  Wars  of  the  Revolution,  1789-1795 — 


Frenchmen  . 1,800,000 

Other  Europeans  . .  .’2, 500, 000 

yars  of  the  Empire,  1795-1815 — 

Frenchmen  . 2,600,000 

Other  Europeans  . 3,500,000 

n  European  and  American  Wars  since  1815 — 

According-  to  Lapouge’s  estimate .  9,450,000 

Grand  (Extremely  Grand)  Total . 19,850,000 


This  total  does  not  show  the  spilt  blood  of  perhaps  one. 
rnndred  million  men,  wounded  in  battle  but  not  killed. 

It  is  especially  important  to  consider  also  that  the  enormous 
otal  of  twenty  million — in  round  numbers — does  not  include 
nany  millions  of  non-combatants  who  in  one  way  and  another 
vere  destroyed  during  the  wars  and  in  consequence  of  the 
vans,  nor  the  immense  number  of  non-combatants  wounded  but 
lot  destroyed,  nor  the  vast  amount  of  blood  befouled  and 
veakened  with  disease. 

The  number  of  men  destroyed  as  combatants  in  the  Franco- 
lerman  War  was  215,000.  Lapouge  estimates  that  for  the  brief 
Branco-German  War  the  number  of  deaths  among  the  non- 
rombatants  above  the  number  that  would  have  died  at  normal 
ieath  rate  within  the  period  consumed  by  the  war  if  there  had 
>een  peace,  was  450,000.  This  is  to  say,  during  that  short  war 
}f  1870-71  the  number  of  non-combatants  whose  death  was  due 
:o  the  war,  was  more  than  double  the  number  destroyed  directly 
n  the  war.  Now  if  this  extra  death  harvest  rate  among  the 
ion-combatants  be  calculated  as  being  somewhat  less  than  half 
:rue  for  all  the  wars  of  the  civilized  world  for  about  one  hundred 
years  following  1789,  we  can  safely  add  to  the  twenty  millions 
slaughtered  on  the  battlefield  and  in  the  military  hospitals — to 
these,  I  say,  we  can  add  twenty  millions  more,  who,  like  the 
four  hundred  .  and  fifty  thousand  non-combantants  in  1870-71, 
were  smitten  with  the  death-breath  of  war. 

This  gives  us  a  “grand”  total  of  forty  millions  (40,000,000) 
men,  women  and  children  actually  slaughtered  or  otherwise 
destroyed  as  a  result  of  one  hundred  years  of  “splendid”  and 
'‘glorious”  and  “grand”  and  “  Christianized”  war — and  (blessed 
be  the  “mysterious  will  of  God  who  reigns”  but  doesn’t  rule 
under  capitalism)  these  forty  million  lives  were  mostly  working 
class  lives. 

(j)  THE  ECONOMIC  CAUSES  OF  WAR. 

(“War  and  Waste,”  by  David  Starr  Jordan,  pages  100,  101,  102, 
103.  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  Publishers.) 

The  French  have  a  motto  when  a  crime  is  committed:  Cher- 
chez  la  femme — Find  the  woman.  Now,  when  war  is  threatened 
or  a  revolution  breaks  out — Cherchez  le  banquier — Seek  the 
banker,  more  exactly  the  entrepreneur,  the  promoter  of  enter¬ 
prise.  Find  out  who  makes  money  from  the  disturbance,  and 
then  trace  the  chain  of  interlocking  directorates  which  lead  to 
the  center. 

The  late  Italian  war  had  its  motive,  in  a  large  part  at  least, 
in  the  speculations  of  the  Bank  of  Rome. 

The  Balkan  War  was  started  with  a  fine  stage-play  of  pa¬ 
triotic  and  humanitarian  feeling  in  the  foreground,  while  behind 
it  was  a  plebeian  perversity  and  intensity  on  which  the  powers 
had  not  counted. 

But  this  war  was  certainly  tolerated  and  encouraged  by  the 
masters  of  Europe.  The  initial  suggestion  came  apparently 
from  the  Russian  Minister  (Hartwig)  at  Belgrade,  but  the  plan 
of  expelling  the  Turk  by  force  found  favor  both  in  Paris  and 
Berlin.  The  final  victory  rests  with  the  Greek  bankers;  these 


were  able  to  furnish  war  funds  and  war  armament  at  a  tim^ 
when  Germany  and  .Austria  were  verging  on  financial  distress 
I  find  in  a  table  bearing  date  of  1904  that  the  Deutsche  Bank 
of  Berhn  was  represented  by.  interlocking  directorates  in  24C 
different  industrial,  transportation  or  exploiting  companies.  The 
D resdener  Bank  was  represented  in  191,  the  Bank  of  Schaaff' 
haussenscher  in  211,  the  Darmstadter  Bank  in  161  and  the  Dis 
conto.  Gesellschaf't  in  110.  These  figures  may  be  doubled  by 
this  time,  and  each  of  the  banks  has  many  branches  or  mino< 
establishments  over  which  it  has  entire  control.  Doubtless 
too,  these  and  other  banks  in  Berlin,  Paris,  London  and  Vienna 
interlock  with  each  other.  They  certainly  connect  with  the 
great  armament  syndicates,  so  powerful  and  so  profitable,  oi 
Krupp,  Schneider,  Armstrong,  Vickers-Maxim  and  the  rest, 
Still  more  important  and  more  significant  is  the  fact  that  these 
various  establishments,  by  interlocking  arrangements,  stand 
very  close  to  the  ruling  powers  in  their  respective  nations. 


Capitalists  Manufacture  War  Scares. 

It  was  found  during  the  recent  expose  of  the  German  war 
office  that  the  Krupp  Company,  a  German  firm  which  manu¬ 
factures  war  armaments,  subsidized  newspapers  in  France  to 
create  animosity  against  the  German  nation  and  thus  create 
a  war  scare  in  Germany  and  a  consequent  increase  in  armament. 

While  nothing  quite  so  flagrant  has  thus  far  come  to  light  iri 
the  United  States  there  is  in  our  country  a  Navy  League  with 
headquarters  in  Washington  which  pours  forth  literature  ap¬ 
pealing  for  a  big  navy.  This  is  supposedly  done  in  the  interest 
of  patriotism. 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  Mr.  J.  Pierpont  Morgan  was, 
until  his  death,  one  of  the  directors  and  intensely  interested  in 
the  league’s  work,  to  which  he  was  a  liberal  contributor. 

Other  officers  and  members  of  the  league  are: 

Herbert  L.  Satterlee,  General  Counsel  of  the  league.  Mr. 
Satterlee  is  a  son-in-law  and  an  heir  of  Mr.  Morgan. 

General  Horace  Porter,  President  of  the  league.  He  was  for 
many  years  an  officer  of  the  Pullman  Company,  a  Morgan  cor¬ 
poration. 

Charles  G.  Glover,  Treasurer  of  the  league.  He  is  president 
of  the  Riggs  National  Bank,  which  is  closer  to  Wall  Street  than 
any  other  bank  in  Washington. 

Colonel  Robert  M.  Thompson,  Chairman  of  the  executive: 
committee  of  the  league.  He  is  an  eminent  financier  of  New 
York,  whose  great  interests  generally  coincide  with  the  colossal 
undertakings  of  the  Morgan  group. 

George  Von  L.  Meyer,  Director  of  the  league.  Mr.  Meyer 
was  Secretary  of  the  Navy  in  the  Taft  administration,  and  on 
March  3  signed  the  remarkable  contract  for  the  Pennsylvania’s; 
armor  that  has  been  the  subject  of  unpleasant  comment  in  con¬ 
gress  and  elsewhere. 

Thus  we  see  the  men  who  profit  by  war  and  militarism 
fostering  war  and  militarism. 

Big  Business  and  Militarism. 

(From  “Patriotism  and  Profits,”  by  Charles  Edward  Russell, 
Pearson’s,  November,  1913.) 

About  February  1,  1913,  there  appeared  in  a  back  advertising 
page  of  a  Philadelphia  newspaper  called  the  Daily  Item  an 
advertisement  one  inch  long  and  one  column  wide  and  set  in 
small  type,  inviting  bids  for  the  furnishing  of  8,000  tons  of 
armor  plate  for  the  dreadnaught  battleship  Pennsylvania,  now 
being  built  for  the  United  States  Navy.  Bids  were  to  be  opened 
in  Washington,  February  18. 


277 


It  was  a  shrinking,  modest  little  advertisement  that  seemed 
to  be  trying  to  hide  itself  in  the  crowd  of  big,  bawling  announce¬ 
ments  all  around  it,  but,  small  as  it  was,  it  had  potent  effect 
In  a  few  days  appeared  at  the  same  hotel  in  Washington  the 
president  of  the  Carnegie  Steel  Company,  the  vice-president  of 
the  Bethlehem  Steel  Company  and  the  vice-president  of .  the 
Midvale  Steel  Company,  all  large  and  well  favored  institutions 
and  familiar  in  the  history  of  armor  plate  profits  in  America. 
These  gentlemen  conferred,  and  on  February  16  they  sub¬ 
mitted  bids,  each  for  his  own  company,  to  furnish  the  8,000  tons 
of  armor  plate  required  for  the  Pennsylvania. 

This  is  called  competitive  bidding  for  government  contracts, 
according  to  law. 

When  the  bids  were  opened  they  were  found  not  to  vary  by 
so  much  as  $1  a  ton,  and  by  another  coincidence,  not  less  re¬ 
markable,  the  prices  named  were  about  $25  a  ton  greater  than 
the  government  had  ever  before  paid  for  armor  plate  of  this 
kind. 

There  were  no  other  bids.  There  never  are  any  other  bids. 

What  It  Costs  to  Make  Armor  Plate. 

(From  Report  of  the  Naval  Committee  of  the  Senate,  quoted 
by  Charles  Edward  Russell  in  “Patriotism  and  Profits,” 
Pearson’s,  November,  1913.) 

Cost  of  labor  and  material . 

Add  for  reforging  .  if 

Maintenance  of  plant  . . . 

Thirty-three  and  one-th’rd  per  cent  profit  on  this . 

Nickel  . . . HI  ™ 

Total  . ’ . - . . . *300 

At  the  time  the  investigation  was  made  the  price  to  the 
United  States  government  was  $411  per  ton.  A  profit  of  33x/z 
per  cent. 

Following  is  a  table  showing  the  profit  made  by  the  patri¬ 
otic”  steel  companies  on  armor  furnished  for  various  battle¬ 
ships: 


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279 


Since  1887  the  United  States  government  has  expended 
$83,000,000  for  armor  plate,  at  least  one-half  representing  pure 
graft. 

In  spite  of  the  tremendous  illegitimate  profits  thus  being 
made,  one  company— the  Carnegie— was  found  guilty  of  repeat¬ 
edly  swindling  the  government  by  palming  off  worthless  armor 
for  good. 

It  was  found,  for  instance,  that  worthless  plate  had  been 
accepted,  paid  for  and  placed  on  war  vessels  as  follows: 

On  the  Amphitrite,  4  plates. 

On  the  Terror,  3  plates. 

On  the  Oregon,  3  plates. 

On  the  Monterey,  4  plates. 

On  the  Monadnock,  6  plates. 

On  the  New  York,  8  plates. 

On  the  Olympia,  3  plates. 

On  the  Indiana,  6  plates. 

On  the  Massachusetts,  4  plates. 

Against  the  discovery  and  publication  of  these  facts  was 
exerted  a  great  and  secret  influence.  But  for  the  persistence  of 
a  few  newspapers,  the  most  active  of  which  was  the  New  York 
World,  the  inquiry  would  have  failed. 

When  the  truth  could  be  no  longer  concealed,  Mr.  Carnegie’s 
company  was  hauled  up  and  fined  $500,000 — for  frauds. 

Then  the  same  subtle  and  tremendous  power  that  has  so 
often  appeared  in  these  matters  was  exerted  and  President 
Cleveland,  a  short  time  before  he  went  out  of  office,  reduced 
the  fine  to  $120,000. 

Meantime  the  government  continued  none  the  less  to  buy 
its  armor  plate  of  this  convicted  swindler,  which  had  already 
made  $5,000,000  of  illegitimate  profits  on  its  armor  plate  deals. 

(k)  THE  MEXICAN  WAR. 

Proclamation  on  the  Mexican  War  by  the  Socialist  Party  of 
America,  April  25,  1914. 

Again  we  are  being  lashed  into  war  by  those  who  profit 
from  war. 

Capitalist  drums  are  beating,  trumpets  blaring  and  forces 
recruiting. 

All  this  that  the  nation  may  be  goaded  into  war  and  the 
workers  made  to  consent  to  shoot  and  be  shot. 

For  centuries  the  resources  of  Mexico  have  lain  dormant. 
Of  late  that  country  has  been  touched  by  the- magic  wand  of 
capitalism  and  the  same  development  is  taking  place  there  that 
always  takes  place  when  modern  capitalism  clashes  with  back¬ 
ward  feudalism. 

Ninety  per  cent  of  her  population  are  still  landless  and 
propertyless.  For  hundreds  of  years  her  people  have  struggled 
against  almost  insurmountable  difficulties  to  overthrow  tyrants 
who  have  ruled  and  ruined  them. 

For  hundreds  of  years  the  Mexican  people  have  been  in  a 
state  of  continuous  revolt  because  the  great  majority  are  in 
condition  of  peonage.  Robbed  of  their  land  in  an  agricultural 
country,  the  change  from  the  Spanish  rule  to  an  independent 
republic  avails  the  Mexican  people  little  or  nothing.  So  long  as 
peonage  remains,  revolt  must  follow  revolt. 

In  vain  did  the  Mexican  people  elevate  Madero  to  the  presi¬ 
dency.  Their  hope  that  he  would  recognize  their  need  and 
restore  the  land  to  the  people  was  not  fulfilled.  They  are  still 
fighting  to  win  Mexico  for  the  Mexicans. 

In  Sonora,  Durango  and  Chihuahua,  where  the  revolutionists 
are  in  control,  the  people  are  taking  possession  of  the  land. 
Now,  when  the  revolutionists  believe  that  victory  is  in  sight, 
the  great  American  republic,  controlled  by  sinister  capitalist 


on  M^crn^:if  To\attrt°mo°d  a™ed  for« 

«:s  upon  pres- - hXrM*r  a  a^s 

the  invaders  ofthef/countrv ' “‘The'i  faCt-‘0nS  Me*ic0  against 
..re",°;E  “  ;“rd“*1|S'“0'  American  army  „„„  „„lh 

a-  sar  a 

he  1“  people1  will  ^ 

:Xtr^uu nr- German' « 

everywhere.0”  " 

depk”’  **  °f  the  War  °n  our  country  will  be 

tr^  sr-^rs 

d’f  to^lmman”  being°Ufo  S  *£  Z'£&Mb'JS£S 

“*  f°r  -er/wor^irA^ 

Every  piratical  power  will  seize  this  opportunity  to  orev 
upon  our  people.  Exploiting  capitalism  will  meet  every  attack 
by  wrapping  the  American  flag  around  its  plunder 

wifh  l'mK  tHat  capitalist  class  in  Colorado,  destroying 
..  .  c  me  guns  American  workers  struggling  for  better 
VT  same  class  that  seeks  tfrulf  Mexico 
The  Socialist  party  is  opposed,  as  a  matter  of  principle  to 

W-fi  °  aggression '  We  believe  that  there  is  but  one 
ustification  for  war,  and  that  is  to  fight  for  freedom.  Our 
freedom  has  not  been  assailed  by  the  Mexicans.  There  is  no 
™*,SOfn  ™ily  American  workingmen  should  leave  their  homes 
fields^”1' leS  t0  haVe  thelf  bodies  mangled  on  Mexican  battle- 

In  the  name  of  two  million  American  Socialists,  in  the  name 
of  thirty  million  Socialists  throughout  the  world,  in  the  name 
Mexico™  civilization,  we  protest  against  the  war  with 

By  the  National  Executive  Committee  of  the  Socialist  Party. 

Victor  Berger, 


Attest 


Walter  Lanfersiek, 

Executive  Secretary. 


Adolph  Germer, 
Geo.  H.  Goebel, 
James  H.  Maurer, 
J.  Stitt  Wilson. 


Capitalistic  Investments  in  Mexico. 

(Table  prepared  by  William  H.  Seamon,  late  of  Chihuahua. 
Printed  in  the  Literary  Digest  of  May  2,  1914.) 


281 


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W 

E ' 


PART  VI. 

SOCIALISM  THE  WAY  OUT 


1.  Reform  Forces  That  Make  for  Socialism. 

(a)  MUNICIPAL  OWNERSHIP. 

Perhaps  the  most  notable  development  of  public  ownership 
is  in  the  sphere  of  municipal  government.  In  Great  Britain  282 
cities  own  and  operate  their  own  gas  plants;  334  cities  own 
their  own  lighting  plants;  38  own  their  own  street  car  systems; 
51  cities  have  built  and  operate  slaughter  houses.  The  develop¬ 
ment  of  muncipal  ownership  has  gone  even  further  in  Germany 
and  is  almost  equally  advanced  in  other  European  countries. 
Even  in  America  municipal  ownership  of  water  works,  gas 
plants  and  lighting  plants  has  gained  considerable  headway 
and  is  growing.  Thus,  under  capitalism  and  without  intending 
to  be  Socialistic,  the  principle  of  public  ownership  develops. 

The  advantages  of  municipal  ownership  as  compared  with 
private  ownership  are  well  described  in  the  following  leaflet 
issued  by  the  National  office  of  the  Socialist  Party: 


Possibilities. 

gjfr... 

Bread  at  3  cents  a  loaf. 

Street  car  service  at  2  cents  a  ride*. 

Gas  (manufactured)  at  50  cents  per  thousand  feet. 

Water,  all  you  want  for  a  family  of  six,  at  25  cents  a  month. 
Electricity  at  one-half  what  it  costs  now. 


Homes  for  the  people  with  rent  one-half  what  it  is  now: — 

These  are  a  few  of  the  possibilities  within  easy,  reach  of  the 
people  of  this  country  at  any  time  they  are  ready  to  do  a  little 
thinking  and  organizing  and  voting  for  themselves. 

And  this  isft't  all. 

Wages  of  the  workers  should  be  raised — and  steadily  in¬ 
creased; 

We  should  provide  care  for  the  sick  and  the  injured  working¬ 
men  and  women; 

Old  age  pensions  for  all. 

A  decent  bifrial  and  provisions  for  those  left  behind — wife, 
children  and  dependents; 

These,  too,  are  possibilities  easily  within  our  reach. 

Wild  and  impractical,  you  say?  A  dream  of  a  visionary? 

Not  at  all.  Every  one  of  these  things  is  perfectly  practical. 

And  we  propose  to  show  you  in  this  leaflet  just  how  it  can 
be  done — in  fact,  just  how  it  is  actually  being  done  already  in 
many  places. 


Some  Actual  Cases. 

Let  us  take  some  very  common  practical  cases  from  actual 
experience  to  start  with  so  it  will  be  perfectly  clear  and  quite 
simple  and  so  there  can  be  no  question  or  argument. 

The  city  of  Milwaukee,  Wis.,  owns  its  own  water  works.  It 
supplies  water.  That’s  one  of  the  necessities  of  life,  even  in 
Milwaukee,  to  400,000  people.  The  average  rate  is  25  cents  per 
family  per  month — unlimited  service — use  all  you  want. 

Think  of  it!  Twenty-five  cents  per  family  per  month.  It 
costs  just  five  times  that  much  in  Racine  and  Superior — cities 
in  the  same  state. 

What  makes  the  difference?  A  very  simple  matter. 

Milwaukee  owns  its  water  works;  Racine  and  Superior  do  not. 


283 


So  then  it  is  the  public  ownership  of  the  water  works  that 
turns  the  trick.  It  reduces  the  cost  of  living  to  just  one-fifth 
of  what  it  is  under  private  ownership  on  that  item.  Meanwhile, 
the  workers  have  an  eight-hour  day,  trades  union  wages  and 
good  conditions. 

There  are  30  cities  in  America  of  over  100,000  population  and 
scores  of  smaller  ones  that  own  their  own  water  plants,  and 
while  they  do  not  all  have  as  good  a  record  as  that  we  have 
just  given,  yet  they  have  all  achieved  similar  results. 

So  there  is  a  whole  line  of  facts  to  sustain  our  proposition 
that  municipal  ownership  reduces  the  cost  of  living,  increase* 
the  returns  to  labor  and  improves  conditions. 

Take  another  case. 

The  city  of  Pasadena,  California,  owns  its  own  electric  light 
and  power  plant.  The  people  there  get  electricity  at  five  cents 
per  kilowatt  hour. 

Now  five  cents  a  k.  w.  h.  is  less  than  half  as  much  as  the 
people  have  to  pay  for  electricity  in  Detroit,  Mich.,  or  Portland, 
Ore.,  where  a  private  company  owns  the  plant. 

And  what  makes  the  difference  here?  Same  as  on  the  water 
question.  Pasadena  owns  its  plant.  The  other  cities  do  not. 
Public  ownership  again. 

For  Everybody. 

Now  you  may  not  use  electricity  at  your  house  and  you  may 
say  that  cheaper  electricity  would  not  reduce  your  cost  of 
living. 

Wait  a  minute.  If  all  the  cities  and  finally  the  states  should 
get  as  wise  as  the  city  of  Pasadena  and  establish  everywhere 
the  public  ownership  of  electric  light  and  power  plants,  elec¬ 
tricity  would  be  even  cheaper  than  it  is  in  Pasadena. 

In  that  case  you  would  not  only  light  your  home  with  elec¬ 
tricity — you  would  heat  with  it,  cook  with  it,  clean  your  house 
with  it,  run  the  sewing  machine,  do  the  washing  and  iron  the 
clothes;  the  farmers  would  milk  their  cows,  churn  their  butter 
and  make  cheese  with  electricity — pump  water,  grind  feed,  shell 
corn,  thresh  wheat  and  maybe  plow  and  harrow  with  electricity. 

There  are  a  dozen  cities  in  America  that  have  made  as  good 
a  showing  as  Pasadena.  There  are  434  in  Great  Britain  that  own 
and  operate  their  own  electric  plants.  And  without  exception 
results  have  been  similar  to  those  above. 

Two-Cent  Car  Fare. 

Let  us  take  another  item.  It  costs  a  good  deal  in  a  modern 
city  for  the  people  to  get  from  place  to  place.  Most  of  us  ride 
at  least  twice  a  day  on  the  street  cars.  That  means  an  expense 
of  not  less  than  $50  to  $75  per  year  for  each  family. 

Municipal  ownership  of  street  cars  in  Great  Britain  has  re¬ 
duced  the  cost  of  that  service  to  an  average  of  1  4-5  cents  per 
ride — a  little  less  than  2  cents.  That  is  less  than  one-half  what 
it  costs  here  and  considerably  less  than  what  it  used  to  cost 
there  under  private  ownership. 

There  are  three  cities  in  America  that  own  street  railways — 
San  Francisco,  Monroe,  La.,  and  St.  Louis,  Mo.,  which  owns  a 
short  line  in  connection  with  its  water  works.  San  Francisco 
started  its  municipal  street  cars  only  a  little  over  a  year  ago. 
They  have  raised  wages  from  27  cents  to  37^4  cents  per  hour, 
reduced  hours  from  10  to  8  per  day,  and  yet  made  a  profit  of 
$266,000  the  first  year. 

In  Great  Britain  there  are  162  street  railways  owned  by 
municipalities.  And  universally,  wages  are  higher,  hours  shorter, 
conditions  better  and  rates  lower  than  they  were  under  private 
ownership. 

What  San  Francisco  has  done,  any  city  can  do. 


What  England  and  Germany  has  done,  the  United  State*  of 
America  can  do. 

“A  Word  to  the  Wise.” 

Here  is  another. 

We  all  use  ice  in  the  summer  time.  It  is  not  only  a  great 
comfort— it  is  a  necessity. 

W<:  ?a35e,as  a  rule’  about  10  cents  for  a  chunk  that  is  supposed 
to  weigh  25  pounds,  but  often  does  not.  In  other  words,  ice 
costs  us  $8  a  ton. 

The  United  States  Government  has  an  ice  plant  for  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  artificial  ice  in  the  Post  Office  Department  at  Wash¬ 
ington,  D.  C.  It  costs  at  the  outside  $2.19  a  ton  to  manufacture 
the  ice.  The  average  cost  for  delivery  is  about  $2  a  ton.  That 
would  make  the  cost  of  ice  under  public  ownership  $4.19  a  ton 

charge^’  °T  JUSt  °ne"haIf  what  the  Priva*e  companie* 

Weatherford,  Okla.,  has  a  municipal  ice  plant  that  uses  the 
exhaust  steam  from  the  municipal  water  and  light  plant,  and  the 
cost  of  producing  the  ice  is  as  low  as  $1  a  ton.  The  cost  of 
delivery  is  $2,  thus  making  the  total  actual  cost  of  ice  $3  de¬ 
livered.  They  sell  it  at  $8  per  ton,  thus  making  an  enormous 
profit  for  the  city,  which  they  use  in  paying  for  their  water  and 
llgb*  p  ant  ^ut  shows  that  ice  can  be  manufactured  and  sold 
at  $4  per  ton,  and  a  profit  made  at  that. 

.  W/V're  safe  therefore,  in  putting  the  cost  of  manufactured 
ice  at  $4  a  ton  delivered— just  one-half  what  it  costs  when  we 
buy  from  the  ice  trust. 


Gas  at  50  Cents  per  Thousand. 


It  costs  us  in  our  American  cities  from  80  cents  to  $1.25  per 
thousand  cubic  feet  for  gas.  The  average  is  around  $1. 

Now  the  sworn  statement  of  the  Milwaukee  Gas  Light  Com¬ 
pany  to  the  Wisconsin  Railroad  Rate  Commission — you  can 
send  to  the  commission  at  Madison,  Wis.,  and  get  the  reports, 
if  you  want  the  details— show  that  gas  is  actually  manufactured 
and  distributed  by  that  company  for  39  1/5  cents  per  thousand 
feet.  And  nearly  two-thirds  of  all  they  handle  they  buy  of  a 
coke  company  and  costs  them  only  19^  cents  per  thousand  The 
company  is  making  a  profit  of  a  million  dollars  a  year. 

Fifty-cent  gas  is  therefore  easily  possible  under  a  proper 
management  of  municipal  ownership. 

There  are  more  than  25  cities  in  America  that  already  own 
municipal  gas  plants.  Over  250  gas  plants  are  owned  by  muni¬ 
cipalities  in  Great  Britain  and  758  in  Germany.  Everywhere  the 
story  is  the  same— better  wages,  shorter  hours  for  labor  a 
lower  price  for  the  consumer  and  a  profit  to  the  city. 


Improved  Conditions  of  Labor. 


To  speak  specifically  of  labor  conditions: 

.  Eleven  cities  in  England  upon  taking  over  their  public  enter¬ 
prises  reduced  the  average  hours  per  week  from  80  to  60  and 
continued  to  reduce  them. 

Glasgow  alone  spent  $515,040  per  year  in  increased  wages, 
shortened  hours  and  improved  conditions  of  its  street  car 
employes. 

According  to  Mr.  Albert  Baker,  former  manager  of  the  Lon¬ 
don  street  railways,  municipal  ownership  of  street  car  lines  in 
England  has  reduced  the  hours  of  street  car  men  48  per  cent 
and  increased  the  wages  not  less  than  42  per  cent. 

The  gains  to  labor  in  better  wages,  shorter  hours  and  im¬ 
proved  conditions  amounted  to  $200,000  per  year  in  London;  and 
nearly  as  much  in  Liverpool. 

And  these  are  only  typical  cases  chosen  out  of,  hundreds. 


285 


hcsc  improved  conditions  follow  municipal  ownership  every- 
here. 

It  Pays. 

And  the  cities  make  well  on  their  municipal  enterprises  at 
lat.  In  spite  of  the  low  rates  and  better  wages,  Milwaukee 
ears  as  high  as  $200,000  per  year  on  its  water  plant.  The 
ty  of  Berlin,  in  Germany,  clears  $4,500,000  per  year  off  its 
jveral  different  municipal  enterprises.  Six  cities  in  England 
>r  which  we  have  figures  at  hand  cleared  $1,440,135  off  their 
as,  water  and  markets  alone  in  a  single  year.  Glasgow  made 
1,837,704  net  profits  off  its  municipal  street  cars  in  a  single  year. 

The  city  of  Cincinnati  owns  a  railroad  336  miles  long  crossing 
iree  states.  It  is  called  the  Cincinnati  Southern  and  runs  south 
om  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  through  Kentucky  to  Chattanooga,  T'en- 
essee.  It  is  worth  $40,000,000.  It  is  paying  for  itself  and 
roducing  a  revenue  of  $526,816  per  year  over  and  above  all 
xpenses.  So  you  see  municipal  ownership  pays.  It  pays  better 
'ages;  it  pays  in  shorter  hours;  it  pays  in  lower  rates — and, 
esides,  has  millions  left  for  the  “common  good,”  as  they  call 

in  England. 

How  It  Works. 

Here,  then,  is  our  proposition: 

A  city  owns  a  water  plant.  It  reduces  the  cost  of  water 
lereby  to  one-fifth  of  what  it  is  under  private  ownership.  It 
aises  the  wages  of  its  workingmen  to  the  trade  union  standard, 
educes  the  hours  of  labor,  gives  them  accident  insurance,  sick 
enefits  and  old  age  pensions.  And  on  top  of  all  that  it  makes 
n  annual  profit  of  $200,000. 

Now,  let  us  take  the  first  year’s  profit  of  $200,000  and  buy 

gas  plant,  to  be  owned  and  operated  by  the  city.  Let  us 
educe  the  price  of  gas  so  that  all  of  the  people  may  use  it. 
,et  us  raise  the  wages  of  the  people  employed  on  the  municipal 
as  plant  to  the  trade  union  standard,  establish  the  eight-hour 
.ay,  give  them  accident  insurance,  sick  benefits  and  old  age  pen- 
ions.  We  shall  then  still  have  left  in  a  city  of,  say  500,000 
lopulation,  a  profit  of  $50,000.  At  any  rate,  this  has  been  accom¬ 
plished  in  many  cities. 

Now,  let  us  take  the  $50,000  profit  we  have  made  on  the 
nunicipal  gas  plant  the  first  year  and  add  it  to  the  $200,000 
irofit  on  the  second  year’s  operation  of  the  municipal  water 
>lant,  and  let  us  buy  or  build  a  municipal  electric  light  plant; 
aise  wages,  shorten  hours,  improve  working  conditions  and  give 
.ccident  insurance,  sick  benefits  and  old  age  pensions  to  the 
/orkers  there.  And  then,  basing  our  judgment  again  upon  actual 
xperience  in  hundreds  of  cities,  we  shall  have,  in  a  city  of  this 
ize,  a  profit  of  at  least  $100,000  a  year. 

Next  let  us  take  the  third  year’s  profit  of  $200,000  on  the 
nunicipal  water  plant,  the  second  year’s  profit  of  $50,000  on  the 
nunicipal  gas  plant  and  the  first  year’s  profit  of  $100,000  >on  the 
lectric  light  plant,  and  with  this  accumulated  sum  let  us  buy 
>ut  the  street  car  system;  raise  wages,  shorten  hours,  improve 
vorking  conditions  and  give  accident  insurance,  sick  benefits 
ind  old  age  pensions  to  the  workers  on  the  street  car  lines, 
^et  us  also  reduce  the  street  car  fares  at  least  to  2  cents  a  ride 
.as  they  have  done  in  England  under  municipal  ownership).  And 
ve  still  shall  have  a  profit  of  several  thousand  dollars  left  every 
rear  on  the  street  railway  operation,  if  we  do  as  well  as  other 
:ities  have  done. 


286 


You  will  see,  we  are  accumulating  quite  a  sum  in  the  fut 
tor  the  common  good. 

Let  us  take  a  part  of  it  and  build  a  municipal  ice  plan! 
again  establishing  the  eight-hour  day,  trade  union  wages  acci 
dent  insurance,  sick  benefits  and  old  age  pensions  for  the  worke  • 
there,  thus  extending  the  benefits  to  another  section  of  th 
working  class.  Let  us  reduce  the  price  of  ice  to  about  $4  a  tor. 
one-half  of  what  it  costs  now,  and  we  still  shall  have  somi 
profit  left  every  year. 

Let  us  establish  a  municipal  coal  yard  in  the  same  way  am 
operate  it  under  the  same  conditions. 

Let  us  build  a  municipal  bakery  in  the  same  way  and  operati 
it  under  the  same  conditions. 

Let  us  buy  land  and  instead  of  allowing  the  increase  to  g: 
to  land  speculators  and  monopolists,  use  it  to  build  houses  fo: 
the  people,  to  be  rented  at  cost  or  sold  on  easy  terms,  minus  al 
the  profit  and  graft  that  go  to  contractors,  landlords  and  specu 
lators  under  private  ownership. 

In  short,  let  us  extend  the  principle  of  municipal  ownership 
in  every  direction,  as  far  and  as  fast  as  possible. 

Municipal  Ownership  Under  Capitalist  Control  Will  Not  Do. 

But  here  a  word  of  warning. 

Municipal  ownership  under  capitalist  control  and  manage 
ment  will  not  do. 

In  all  the  old  political  parties,  even  the  most  progressive  oi 
them,  there  are  capitalistic  owners  of  public  utilities.  They  will 
fight  to  the  last  ditch  against  municipal  ownership,  because 
their  profits  are  at  stake.  Or  when  they  cannot  stem  the  tidej 
any  longer,  they  will  try  to  unload  their  properties  on  the  city 
at  exorbitant  prices.  Or  they  will  try  to  cripple  the  municipal 
plants  in  order  that  they  may  discredit  municipal  ownership 
and  thereby  get  control  again.  Or,  finally,  at  the  very  best, 
capitalistic  control  of  municipal  ownership  turns  the  profits 
into  the  public  treasury  to  reduce  taxes,  instead  of  lowering 
rates  and  increasing  returns  to  labor.  Thus  with  the  old  parties, 
reform  parties,  or  any  kind  of  capitalistic  parties  in  control  of 
your  city  government,  municipal  ownership  is  not  safe,  and  you 
cannot  be  sure  of  securing  the  benefits  we  have  outlined  here. 

So  you  cannot  trust  municipal  ownership  to  the  Republicans, 
the  Democrats  or  the  Progressives,  or  any  other  capitalistic 
or  reform  party. 

The  Socialist  Party,  on  the  other  hand,  is  made  up  of  the 
working  class  whose  economic  interests  demand  municipal  own¬ 
ership,  managed  in  the  interest  of  the  working  class  and  in  the 
interests  of  the  people  as  a  whole.  It  is  the  only  party,  there¬ 
fore,  that  can  be  trusted  to  really  establish  municipal  ownership 
and  carry  it  out  on  the  right  principles.  It  is  the  only  party  that 
has  a  real  constructive  program  in  regard  to  municipal  owner- 
ship.  It  fights  for  municipal  ownership,  not  in  the  interests  of 
capital,  but  in  the  interests  of  labor;  not  to  reduce  taxes,  but 
to  raise  wages  and  reduce  the  cost  of  living;  not  to  enrich  the 
few,  but  to  better  serve  the  whole  people. 

Therefore  we  say: 

Vote  the  Socialist  ticket  and  vote  it  straight. 

It  will  help  us  get  municipal  ownership  and  will  insure  it* 
operation  upon  correct  principles. 

It  will  help  us  solve  our  problems  here  in  this  city  now;  and 
it  will  help  us  to  carry  these  principles  into  the  state  and  nation 
later  on. 


\  Few  Statistics  on  Municipal  Ownership  as  Compared  with 
Private  Ownership. 

1  Wages  are  higher  and  hours  of  labor  shorter.  Taking  first 
some  examples  from  our  own  country  the  table  below  shows  that 
tn  the  cases  cited  the  average  hour§  of  labor  are  two  and  one-half 
ess  per  day  under  public  ownership  than  private.  And  the  wage* 
ire  an  average  of  $375  per  year  higher. 

Hours  and  Wages  in  Public  and  Private  Service. 


(“City  for  the  People,’’  pp.  164-165.) 


Private — 

Western  Union  Operators . 

Philadelphia  Street  Railway . if 

N.  Y.  Brooklyn  L  Roads . 

Boston  West  End  Street  Railway  Em... 

Brooklyn  Bridge  . 

Average  . 

.  Public — 

Railway  Mail  Clerks . 

Postal  Carriers . ; . 

Brooklyn  Bridge  Railway  Tram .  » 

Boston  Police  . 

Brooklyn  Bridge  . 

Average  . 

The  following  table,  taken  from  the  Report  of  the  Civic  Federa¬ 
tion,  Part  1,  Vol.  I,  p.  280,  shows  the  sharp  contrast  between 
public  and  private  employ: 


Average 

Average 

Hours 

Pay 

Per  Day. 

Per  Year. 

. .  .12 

$540 

. .  .12 

720 

700 

520 

. .  .10 

700 

.  .  .11 

$620 

$1030 

.  . .  8 

900 

.  .  .  8 

1000 

.  •  -  7i/a 

1210 

.  .  .  8 

1000 

$  99S 

of  the  Civic  Federa- 

Maximum  Pay 
Per  Week. 


Wages  and  Hours  of  Labor  on  Municipal  and  Private  English 

Tramways. 

Hours 

Municipalities —  Per  Week. 

Glasgow  . 

Manchester  . 

Liverpool  . . . 

London  (C.  . . 

Municipal  average  . 

Companies — 

London  United .  /U 

Dublin  United  .  4® 

Norwich  . . 

Brietol  . 

Company  average . 


54 

$7.44 

54 

7.44 

60 

7.50 

60 

9.00 

57 

$7.84 

70 

$9.24 

70 

6.78 

70 

6.72 

70 

6.12 

70 

$7.20 

In  other  words,  those  who  work  for  the  people  work  13  hours 
less  and  get  64  cents  more  every  week  than  those  who  work  for 
the  private  companies. 

The  best  and  fairest  method  of  comparison  is  to  take  the  hours 
of  labor  and  wages  under  public  and  private  ownership  in  the 
eame  city,  where  all  conditions  are  practically  the  same  in  both 
cases.  Fortunately  this  has  been  done  for  us  by  Prof.  Commons 
in  the  Civic  Federation  Report  on  Private  and  Municipal  Oper¬ 
ation,  Part  1,  Vol.  I,  p.  107,  as  follows: 


Minimum  Wages  and  Hours  for  Common  Labor  in  American  Cities. 
Public  and  Private  Enterprises. 


City— 

Syracuse  . . . 
Detroit 
Allegheny  . 
Wheeling  . 
Cleveland  .  . 
Indianapolis 
Chicago 
New  Haven 
Richmond  .  . 
Atlanta 

Average  . 


Municipal. 

Wage.  Hours. 
$1.50  8 

1.75  8 

2.75  8 

1.85  8-9 

1.76  8 

1.60  8 

2.00  8 

1.50  8 

2.00  S 

1.00  10 

$1.77  8  % 


Private. 


Wage. 

Hours. 

$1.50 

10 

1.80 

9 

1.75 

10 

1.85 

10 

1.75 

10 

1.50 

10 

1.75 

1# 

1.50 

9 

1.20 

9 

1.00 

1® 

$1.56 

9%. 

In  other  words,  those  who  work  for  the  people  work  on  an 
•erage  of  1%  hours  less  and  get  21  cents  more  every  day 
These,  of  course,  are  only  a  few  illustrations  that  might  bs 
tended  beyond  limits.  It  is  generally  conceded,  we  believe,  that 
e  public  is  always  more  considerate  and  Just  in  its  treatment 
labor  than  private  corporations.  (See  ’C i> t y  tor,  the  People, 
lapter  1.  “Public  Ownership  of  Public  Utilities.  Also  The 
ory  of  New  Zealand,”  by  the  same  author.  Also  Municipal 
vnershlp  in  Great  Britain,”  Jan.,  1906,  Bulletin,  U.  S.  Bureau  of 
.bor.) 


Hi*  Mon*,  for  tk*  City  Jn  Municipal  Owncrakln. 

Inga  in0^ngLna!"rbroug^t  rup  tietthen  3°/stRd  P™df  Cv!Ve  Undert»k- 
1SSS,  Ind”!  tram  way  s"  thStlh’ey ' a™**’  “Teie“r°Alty 

of  J,7V6?38^^mThese^  same^enterpriseti^iia  ^h^-^l^repaymeiu) 


Anna* I  Profit*  Under  Municipal  Ownership. 

w  *  Total 

«  Y/fJcr-  Markets.  Net  Prflt 

*  ZU,4o5 
112,265 
22,500 
210,000 
2,515 
37,145 


i5gl?am  . $139,830 

£™Pool  . 7.  private 

Bradford  . 7.7.  .7.  .'  °° 

L,eed3  . loss  ’  2*, 035 


$18,800 

73,355 

61,715 

16,500 

10,925 

61,430 


$179,085 
338,565 
84,21s 
374,000 
368,045 
i.225 


Total  in  the  six  cities  .  1 777777- 

(  Municipalities  at  Work,”  Dolman,  p.'  140  ) . U, 440,13, 

enteM  »«,§& 


(b)  PUBLIC  OWNERSHIP  OF  RAILWAYS. 

Perhaps  most  striking  of  all  the  capitalistic  developments  ir 
the  direction  of  Socialism  is  the  government  ownership  move 
ment  Sixty-nine  out  of  78'  nations  already  publicly  own  anc 
operate  all  or  parts  of  their  railway  systems.  Practically  everv 
nation,  with  the  exception  of  the  United  States,  owns  its  tele¬ 
graph  system.  Other  nations  have  inaugurated,  to  some  extern 
at  least  the  government  ownership  in  mines,  forests,  water¬ 
ways  and  other  natural  resources  and  public  utilities 

Moreover,  the  movement  in  the  direction  of  public  owner¬ 
ship  is  going  on  with  increasing  rapidity  and  almost  without 
backPtl0n  °nCe  a  nati°n  moves  in  this  direction  it  never  goes 

Public  Ownership  of  Railroads. 

(Excerpts  from  a  Pamphlet  by  Carl  D.  Thompson,  Published 
by  the  Socialist  Party.) 

Of  the  78  nations  of  earth  69,  or  all  but  9,  own  more  or  less 
of  their  railroads. 

Nine  nations  own  all  of  their  roads  publicly. 

Fourteen  nations  own  95  per  cent  or  more  of  their  railroad 
mileage;  19  own  seven-eighths  or  more  of  their  total  mileage- 
27  own  over  four-fifths,  and  60  of  the  whole  78  nations  own  more 
than  one-half  of  their  total  railroad  mileage. 

Public  ownership  is  practically  an  accomplished  fact  outside 
of  the  United  States. 

The  following  table  presents  the  situation  as  nearly  as  we 
can  get  at  it  at  the  present  time: 


Railroad  Mileage  of  the  World. 


PRIVATELY  AND  PUBLICLY  OWNED. 

Total  number  of  nations  listed .  7« 

Having-  nationally  owned  railroads  . .7 .  g# 

Having  no  public  ownership  . 

Owning  all .  .  f 

Owning  95 %  and  over . 7  7  77” .  1 4 

Owning  %  and  over .  . 

Owning  %  and  over .  * .  9r, 

Owning  %  and  over . 7.7. . 6© 


The  result  of  government  ownership  of  railways  for  the  last 
twenty-five  or  thirty  years  has  been  a  story  of  successful  achieve¬ 
ment  from  the  very  beginning.  In  the  first  place  the  enormous 
incomes  from  railroad  operations  instead  of  pouring  into  the 
hands  of  a  few  irresponsible  capitalists,  as  they  are  under  pri¬ 
vate  ownership,  are  turned  into  service  of  the  common  good. 
The  people  actually  get  lower  rates,  they  get  better  service  and 
more  of  it.  When  profits  arise  rates  are  reduced,  or  the  service 


289 


extended  and  improved.  Labor  is  better  treated.  Over-capi¬ 
talization  and  fraud  are  practically  eliminated;  unfair  rates  and 
discrimination  are  unknown — all  are  treated  alike.  And  finally, 
in  spite  of  heavy  indebtedness  incurred  in  the  process  of  nation¬ 
alization,  the  public  roads  have  been  a  most  remarkable  finan¬ 
cial  success. 

The  Belgium  state  railroads  have  made  a  net  profit  for  the 
government  of  $11,750,000  per  year,  or  a  total  of  $251,000,000  in 
eight  years.  Germany  cleared  in  1904,  $375,000,000  and  in  1905 
the  net  surplus,  after  all  expenses  for  interest,  new  equipment, 
extension,  depreciation,  etc.,  were  paid,  was  over  $120,000,000. 
Prussia  clears  enough  off  of  her  railroads  to  cover  fully  one-half 
of  all  the  other  government  expenses.  In  1897  the  net  profit 
on  the  railroads  was  $238,000,000.  The  net  earnings  of  the  gov¬ 
ernment  railroads  in  New  South  Wales  in  1904  were  $5,800,000. 
Austria-Hungary  clears  $5,782,200  per  year;  South  Australia, 
$2,400,000;  New  Zealand,  $3,700,000.  Even  Brazil,  in  South 
America,  saved  its  people  $2,000,000  per  year  on  its  govern¬ 
ment  railroads.  (“U.  S.  Consular  Report”  No.  205  October, 
1907,  p.  291;  “Railways,  Trusts  and  the  People,”  p.  347  and  386; 
Document  65,  56th  Congress,  first  session;  “Everybody’s,” 
February,  1907,  p.  182;  “Arena,”  February  and  March,  1907, 
“Railway  Experience  in  Germany”;  “Statistical  Acct.  of  Aus¬ 
tralia  ancf  New  Zealand,”  1903-4.)  And  so  on  through  the 
whole  list  of  nations  that  own  their  railroads. 

We  do  not  think  that  the  railroads  of  the  country  should  be 
run  primarily  to  make  profit;  nor  that  the  profit  should  be  used 
as  it  is  in  Germany  to  pay  the  other  expenses  of  the  government. 
It  should  be  used  either  to  improve  or  extend  the  service  or 
to  reduce  the  cost.  We  believe  the  theory  of  New  Zealand  is 
more  nearly  the  correct  one.  In  that  country  it  is  the  rule  that 
as  soon  as  the  profits  on  the  railroads  go  above  3  per  cent,  the 
rates  are  reduced.  And  reductions  have  been  made  amounting 
to  as  high  as  20  and  40  per  cent  in  a  single  year.  If  such  a  re¬ 
duction  as  that  had  been  made  on  the  railroads  in  this  country 
in  any  recent  year,  it  would  have  meant  a  saving  of  $500,000,000 
to  our  people.  But  while  the  people  of  New  Zealand,  because 
they  go  on  the  idea  that  the  railroads  should  be  operated  for 
service  and  not  for  profit,  have  the  advantage  of  a  constantly 
reducing  rate,  we  in  this  country  have  seen  rates  increased. 

Advantages  to  Labor. 

Wages.— New  Zealand  after  establishing  the  government 
ownership  of  the  railroads  has  steadily  raised  the  wages  of  the 
employes  since  1896,  amounting  in  some  cases  to  as  much  as  60 
per  cent.  (“Story  of  New  Zealand,”  Parsons.)  Switzerland 
upon  taking  over  her  railways  raised  the  wages  15  per  cent. 
(“Railways,  Trusts  and  the  People,”  p.  365.)  Th<;  a^ragC 
wages  in  Germany  under  government  ownership  are  $45.00  per 
year  higher  than  in  England  under  private  ownership.  And  when 
we  consider  that  the  German  employes  have  in  addition  to 
their  wages  an  allowance  averaging  over  $100  per  year  towards 
house  rent,  and  in  addition  to  all  that  have  insurance  against 
accident,  sickness  and  death  besides,  it  will  be  seen  that  the 
wages  are  certainly  more  than  $150  per  year  higher  on  the  gov¬ 
ernment  roads  in  Germany  than  on  the  private  roads  in  Eng¬ 
land.  And  that  does  not  really  show  the  full  advantage  of 
public  ownership  in  this  respect,  because  a  dollar  in  wages 
means  more  in  Germany  than  in  England — the  general  wage 
level  is  higher  in  England. 

It  is  often  claimed  that  wages  are  higher  on  the  private 
roads  in  America  than  on  the  public  roads  of  Europe.  This  is 
undoubtedly  true;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  general 
wage  level  and  the  cost  of  living  are  much  higher  here  than 


290 


there.  The  only  fair  method  is  to  compare  conditions  in  a  cer¬ 
tain  country  before  and  after  public  ownership;  or  at  least  to 
compare  conditions  under  public  ownership  with  conditions  in 
a  country  of  practically  the  same  conditions. 

That  the  change  to  government  ownership  in  this  country 
would  result  in  a  reduction  of  hours  and  an  increase  of  wages 
is  assured.  Each  of  the  measures  presented  in  Congress  for  the 
nationalization  of  railways,  the  first  one  January  3,  1900  (56th 
Congress,  First  Session,  document  53,  “Railway  Nationaliza- 
tion  ),  a  second  one  in  Feb.,  1907  (“Government  Ownership  of 
Railroads,  speech  on  Senate  bill  8436),  and  a  third  one  in  1912 
presented  by  Victor  L.  Berger,  the  first  Socialist  congressman, 
all  provided  for  an  eight-hour  day  and  for  an  increase  of  wages. 

Hours  of  Labor.— The  contrast  between  public  and  private 
ownership  m  the  matter  of  hours  of  labor  is  even  greater. 
Hours  of  labor  on  our  American  railroads  are  tragic.  Men  are 
worked  to  the  very  limits  of  human  endurance.  What  the 
average  is  we  cannot  know.  But  it  is  known  that  thousands 
of  men  work  12  to  18  hours  per  day;  that  it  is  no  unusual  thing 
for  them  to  be  kept  on  duty  20  and  even  36  hours  without  relief 
Indeed,  in  extreme  cases;  40  to  48  hours  of  continuous  service 
have  been  performed.  In  England,  where  the  railroads  are  also 
privately  owned,  “the  Board  of  Trade  found  in  one  month  3,971 
instances  of  engineers  and  firemen  working  more  thaf!  18  hours, 
and  20,273  more  than  15  hours,  and  there  are  plenty  of  cases  of 
‘days’  ranging  from  20  to  33  hours,  if  you  can  imagine  a  33-hour 
day.”  .  “Railways,  Trusts  and  the  People,”  p.  468.  In  a  personal 
investigation  of  the  hours  of  labor  of  telegraphers  in  Wisconsin 
the  author  found  the  average  about  14  per  day;  20  to  36  hours 
were  not  at  all  uncommon,  and  in  a  few  cases  men  had  been  on 
duty  72  consecutive  hours  without  rest. 


To  be  sure,  some  states,  on  ground  of  “the  safety  of  the 
traveling  public”  (never  out  of  consideration  for  the  men),  have 
tried  now  and  then  to  regulate  these  matters.  The  laws  are 
seldom  enforced,  it  seems,  but  even  if  they  were,  what  would 
it  mean?  In  Georgia  they  would  be  limited  to  13  hours  per  day; 
in  Ohio  15.  In  Colorado  and  Nebraska  the  law  used  to  limit 
the  hours  to  18;  in  Minnesota  to  20;  and  in  New  York  and 
Michigan  24.  “There  is  something  pathetic  in  such  rules  and 
regulations.  If  it  was  necessary  for  New  York  and  Michigan 
to  forbid  the  companies  working  their  men  longer  than  24 
hours  without  an  eight-hour  rest,  the  questions  naturally  arise, 
How  long  would  the  companies  work  the  men  if  unrestrained? 
and  How  much  can  the  railway  men  stand  anyhow?”  (“R’vs 
T.  &  P.”  p.  467.) 

Nowhere  on  earth  are  such  criminal  hours  of  labor  exacted — - 
nowhere  except,  perhaps,  in  some  other  countries  where,  as  here, 
the  railroads  are  privately  owned.  In  Italy  on  the  government 
roads  10  hours  is  the  limit;  in  Switzerland  8;  in  New  South 
Wales  8;  in  Prussia  11  for  general  employes,  for  switchmen  8, 
and  engineers  10.  One  may  almost  say  that  the  eight-hour  day  j 
is  being  established  everywhere  under  government  ownership, 
for  it  has  already  come  in  many  departments  (in  all  departments 
in  some  countries),  and  the  tendency  everywhere  is  in  that 
direction. 

Rest  Days,  Holidays  and  Vacations. — These  also  are  much  i 

more  liberally  provided  under  government  ownership.  In  Ger¬ 
many  every  active  employe  is  entitled  to  two  holidays  per  I 
month,  and  trainmen  must  be  permitted  to  rest  at  their  homes 
not  less  than  10  consecutive  hours  daily;  in  Switzerland  52  holi-  ! 
days  are  allowed  each  year  in  addition  to  a  continuous  vacation 
of  8  days.  (“Foreign  Laws  relating  to  R’y  Employes,”  Bulletin 
of  the  Bureau  of  Labor.) 

By  far  the  larger  part  of  the  railway  employes  here 


291 


work  every  Sunday  (without  extra  pay)  and  evefy  day  in  the 
year;  a  great  proportion  work  at  night,  and  in  cases  of  acci¬ 
dents  and  emergencies,  which  are  altogether  too  frequent,  must 
work  Sundays  and  nights  as  well  as  days. 

Better  Housing  of  the  Employes. — In  at  least  some  of  the 
foreign  countries  the  governments  provide  another  advantage 
for  their  employes  which  is  unique  and  suggestive.  In  New 
Zealand  the  government  itself  builds  houses  and  rents  them  to 
its  employes.  This  protects  them  from  excessive  rents  by  afford¬ 
ing  a  means  of  escape  from  the  private  landlord.  Matters  of 
this  kind  are  a  decided  advantage  to  labor  by  helping  to  reduce 
the  cost  of  living. 

And  besides,  the  New  Zealand  government  makes  a  special 
provision  for  workingmen’s  homes  by  advancing  them  money 
with  which  to  build.  (“Story  of  New  Zealand,”  p.  222.)  Ger¬ 
many  does  even  better,  having  built  over  40,800  dwellings  which 
are  rented  to  the  working  men  at  -a  low  figure.  (Annals  of 
American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science,  March, 
1907.) 

All  the  employes  of  the  Prussian  state  railways  receive  allow¬ 
ances  for  house  rent  amounting  to  $28  a  year  for  the  lowest  class; 
$75  for  the  fourth  class;  $125  for  the  third  class;  $160  for  the 
second  class;  and  $200  for  the  first  class.  Thus  again  the  gov¬ 
ernment  ownership  of  railroads  is  used  as  a  means  of  protecting 
the  working  class  in  the  matter  of  cost  of  living.  “R’ys,  T.  &  P.,” 
p.  349.)  The  railway  administration  of  Prussia  owned  30,840 
houses  of  this  kind  at  the  end  of  1899;  in  1905  the  number  had 
increased  to  40,800  (“Prussian  Railway  Administration,”  An. 
Am.  A.  Pol.  &  So.  Science,  Mar.,  1907),  while  loans  of  public 
money  to  the  amount  of  $135,000  have  been  granted  to  building 
societies,  which  in  this  way  have  provided  1,266  dwellings  for 
the  working  people.  (“The  German  Workman,  Dawson,  p. 
118.)' 

Accident  Insurance,  Sick  Benefits  and  Old  Age  Pensions. — 

The  establishment  of  public  ownership  is  almost  always  followed 
by  the  inauguration  of  a  system  of  accident  insurance  and  old- 
age  pensions.  Under  private  ownership,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
requires  a  constant  legal  fight  and  interminable  litigation  to 
compel  the  railroads  to  provide  for  the  killed  and  injured.  And 
this  is  all  the  worse  because  the  management  of  our  private 
roads  is  so  much  more  reckless  than  that  of  government  roads. 

Advantages  to  the  Public. 

Rates,  Both  Passenger  and  Freight,  Are  Lower  Under  Public 
Ownership. — A  careful  study  of  this  subject  shows  that  it  would 
be  possible  under  public  ownership  to  reduce  the  passenger 
rates  to  at  least  one  cent  a  mile,  the  freight  rates  similarly,  while 
at  the  same  time  improving  the  system,  increasing  the  efficiency 
of  operation,  and  improving  the  conditions  of  labor. 

Frank  Parsons,  who  has  made  perhaps  the  most  careful  study 
of  the  comparative  rates  under  public  and  private  ownership 
f  (the  Arena,  Mar.,  1907),  says  that  both  freight  and  passenger 
rates  are  lower  in  Germany  than  in  England  or  the  United 
States.  The  average  passenger  rate  is  less  than  one  cent  a 
mile  against  two  cents  in  the  United  States,  and  2 cents  in 
Great  Britain.  Mr.  Larabee,  in  discussing  this  subject,  shows 
that  the  average  fare  per  mile  is  2.15  cents  in  the  United  States 
under  private  ownership.  Under  public  ownership,  the  average 
rates  are  as  follows:  Austria,  1.67  cents;  Germany,  1.17  cents; 
Belgium,  1.18  cents;  Denmark,  1.20  cents;  France,  1.45  cents; 
Italy,  1.64  cents;  Russia,  1.45  cents. 

And  besides,  under  government  ownership  the  passenger 
traffic  is  handled  in  a  different  way.  For  example,  the  zone 
system  is  quite  generally  put  in  operation,  and  there  are  offered 


292 

second,  third  and  even  fourth  class  tickets  at  greatly  reduced 
rates.  Under  this  system  the  rate  is  one  cent  a  mile  or  less 
for  long  distances  and  runs  down  to  about  one-third  of  a  cent 
a  mile.  One  can  travel  457  miles  for  $1.60.  A  similar  service  in 
this  country  would  cost  $9.14.  The  result  of  this  system  was  to 
reduce  the  rates  fully  50  per  cent  and  the  stimulus  to  travel  was 
so  great  the  traffic  doubled  and  the  receipts  increased  in  spite 
of  the  reduction.  (“R’ys,  T.  &  P.”  p.  375.)  In  Switzerland,  the 
government  roads  offer  tickets,  good  over  the  entire  railway 
system  of  the  country  for  one  month,  for  $15  second  class,  and 
$11  third  class.  Tickets  good  over  the  entire  system  for  an 
entire  year  are  sold  for  $59  second  class,  and  $45  third  class. 

Under  these  provisions,  Larabee,  in  his  “Railway  Problems,” 
and  Todd,  in  his  “American  and  European  Railroads,”  and 
Cowles,  in  his  “General  Freight  and  Passenger  Post,”  show  that 
the  rates  under  government  ownership  are  reduced  in  some 
cases  to  as  low  as  three-fifths  of  a  cent  per  mile  in  Germany, 
France,  Austria,  and  one-tenth  of  a  cent  a  mile  on  working¬ 
men's  tickets  in  Belgium.  J.  D.  Miller,  in  his  “Finance  and 
Transportation,”  has  shown  that  on  one  form  of  tickets  in 
Hungary,  the  workingmen  are  able  to  travel  944  miles  for  $2.70, 
third  class.  Similar  services  in  this  country  would  cost  $18.80, 
or  seven  times  as  much.  In  Switzerland  and  New  Zealand  the 
government  also  makes  special  reduced  and  excursion  rates  for 
school  children,  thus  aiding  the  cause  of  education. 

Speaking  of  freight  rates,  Prof.  Parsons  says,  “There  is  an 
impression  that  freight  rates  in  Germany  hre  much  higher  than 
in  the  United  States.  This  impression  has  resulted  from  the 
comparison  of  average  rates  without  explanation  of  what  the 
average  rate  is.”  The  German  freight  rate  includes  express.  It 
also  includes  large  amounts  of  traffic,  which  in  this  country  are 
handled  by  private  fast  freight  trains.  And  besides,  the  German 
roads  carry  an  immense  amount  of  mail  and  baggage  for  the 
parcel  post,  for  which  they  get  no  pay.  The  American  roads, 
on  the  other  hand,  receive  enormous  sums  from  these  sources. 
Therefore,  Prof.  Parsons  concludes,  “making  allowance  for  ex¬ 
press  and  mail,  freight,  etc.,  the  German  commissioners,  recently 
in  this  country,  conclude  that  a  proper  figure  for  our  average 
freight  rate  would  be  1.44  cents  per  ton-mile,  while  the  figure 
for  the  Prussian  roads  would  be  .95  cents.  (“Railways,  Trusts 
and  the  People,”  Parsons,  p.  339.) 

On  the  private  roads  of  Great  Britain  the  average  ton-mile 
rate  is  80  per  cent  higher  than  the  average  German  rate.  It  is 
therefore  clear  that  the  passenger  rates  are  decidedly  lower 
under  government  ownership  and  freight-rates  at  least  consid¬ 
erably  so. 

Better  Service. — Practically  every  authority  upon  the  subject 
of  government  roads  agrees  that  the  change  to  public  ownership 
results  in  an  improved  service.  More  and  better  trains  are  run. 
The  tickets  are  made  in  greater  variety  so  as  to  better  serve  the 
convenience  of  the  people.  For  example,  workingmen’s  tickets 
are  issued,  which  are  of  great  service  to  the  working  class,  but 
in  addition  monthly  and  even  yearly  tickets  are  sold  at  most 
surprisingly  low  rates,  which  are  a  great  convenience  and  saving 
to  business  and  professional  men,  doctors  and  traveling  men, 
as  well  as  the  general  public.  In  Germany  at  one  time  private 
car  lines  supplied  all  the  sleepers,  as  they  do  in  this  country. 
But  now  under  government  ownership  the  state  runs  sleeping 
cars  of  its  own  and  the  service  is  much  improved.  The  Ger¬ 
mans  do  not  seem  to  appreciate  the  idea  of  having  to  balance 
themselves  on  the  back  of  their  heels  and  the  nape  of  their 
necks  to  undress  and  having  to  sleep  on  a  shelf.  Accommoda¬ 
tions  which  in  this  country  would  cost  $7  are  provided  in  the 


293 

sleeping  cars  on  the  German  roads  for  $2.50,  about  one-third 
as  much. 

In  the  matter  of  freight  rates  the  greater  serviceableness  of 
government  roads  is  shown  in  many  ways.  In  the  first  place 
it  is  agreed  by  all  authorities  that  the  vicious  discriminations 
which  have  been  the  curse  of  private  ownership  are  unknown. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  tariffs  are  simple  and  flexible  and  are 
made  to  serve  in  every  way  the  needs  of  commerce  more  fully 
than  the  private  roads. 

Greater  Safety  of  Travel  and  Fewer  Murderous  Railroad 
Wrecks  Under  Public  Ownership. — Of  all  the  railroads 

in  the  world  those  of  our  country  are  the  most  de¬ 
structive,  reckless  and  murderous.  During  the  single  year 
of  1912,  10,585  people  were  killed  and  169,538  people 
injured.  It  is  estimated  that  our  railroads  in  America 
have  killed  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  people  and 
crippled  over  a  million  more.  The  private  roads  here  are  much 
worse  than  the  private  roads  of  Great  Britain.  The  latter  carry 
annually  400,000,000  more  passengers  than  the  American  roadi 
and  killed  only  166  passengers  in  1905;  and  while  the  railroads 
in  America  killed  10,000  people  in  1904,  the  railroads  of  Germany 
which  are  owned  and  operated  by  the  government  killed  on  the 
entire  system  only  74.  Furthermore,  while  the  safety  of  rail¬ 
way  travel  has  slowly  but  steadily  increased  in  other  countries, 
it  has  decreased  here  in  America;  while  the  number  of  persons 
killed  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  passengers  carried  has 
steadily  decreased  in  other  countries,  it  has  steadily  increased 
in  America.  (Ridgeways,  Feb.  9,  1907.)  The  railroads  of 
America  under  private  ownership  are  seven  times  as  destructive 
of  life  and  property  as  are  the  railroads  owned  by  the  govern¬ 
ment  in  Austria-Hungary  and  six  times  as  destructive  as  the 
government  railroads  of  Germany.  One  trainman  out  of  every 
364  that  are  employed  is  killed  by  the  private  American  rail¬ 
roads  in  every  year,  and  one  out  of  22  is  injured.  Railroading 
is  more  perilous  than  war,  and  even  more  fatal  than  the  most 
mortal  of  all  wars,  the  great  conflict  of  the  sixties.”  (“Railroad 
Nationalization,”  p.  60.) 

The  safety  attained  by  the  German  government  roads  is  one 
of  their  great  achievements.  There  are  more  people  killed  on 
the  private  roads  every  week  in  America  than  are  killed  on  the 
German  roads  in  a  year,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  there 
are  200,000,000  more  passengers  carried  on  the  railroads  of 
Germany  than  on  ours.  Our  roads  killed  over  six  times  a* 
many  and  injured  25  times  as  many  passengers  as  the  Prussian 
roads.  (“R’ys,  T.  &  P.,”  p.  330.) 

Prof.  Parsons  has  prepared  a  careful  statement,  compiled 
from  the  reports  of  different  countries,  which  shows  that  “rail¬ 
way  travel  is  safest  in  Denmark,  Norway,  Switzerland,  Sweden, 
Belgium,  Germany,  Austria-Hungary  and  Australia  (all  govern¬ 
ment  roads);  that  it  is  more  dangerous  in  Great  Britain  (pri¬ 
vate)  than  in  any  of  the  above  mentioned  countries,  and  that  in 
the  United  States  it  is  most  dangerous  of  all;  about  6  times  as 
dangerous  as  in  Germany;  17  times  as  dangerous  as  in  Belgium; 
3  times  as  dangerous  as  in  France,  and  4  times  as  dangerous 
as  in  Great  Britain.”  And  in  every  case  the  greatest  safety  is  at¬ 
tained  in  the  countries  where  the  railroads  are  owned  and 
operated  by  the  government;  and  the  number  of  persons  killed 
in  proportion  to  the  number  of  passengers  carried  increases 
exactly  in  proportion  to  the  degree  of  private  ownership. 
(“R’ys,  T.  &  P.”  p.  444.) 

Public  Ownership  Would  Tend  to  a  More  Stable  Financial 
Condition  in  the  Country. — Railroad  stocks  and  bonds  constitute 
about  75  per  cent  of  the  material  with  which  the  stock  jobbers 
and  brokers  gamble  on  Wall  Street.  And  this  railroad  capital 


fnS  ^  kS  ”?  st°cks  anywhere  from  30  per  cent  to  300  per  cent, 

Sfbi°nd®.  fr°m,?-  to  1P°  per  cent  each  anh  every  year.  It  is 
this  fitful  and  appalling  rise  and  fall  in  the  stocks  and  bonds  of 

railroads  that  constitutes  one  of  the  most  disturbing  elements 
in  the  modern  financial  world.  The  manipulation  of  these  things 
by  the  stock  gamblers  is  often  the  cause  of  a  demoralization  in 
the  country,  of  panics  and  hard  times  with  all  their  damning 
and  disheartening  effects.  Over  $700,000,000  worth  of  railroad 
bonds  and  $100,000,000  worth  of  shares  of  railroad  stock  are 
sold  on  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange  in  a  single  year.  And 
yet  all  this  enormous  railway  capital  is  the  subject  of  every 
panic,  accident,  combination,  frown  of  fortune,  and  fury  of  fren¬ 
zied  finance.  The  terrible  panics  of  1854-7  and  1873  are  by  many 
attributed  directly  to  excessive  railroad  building  and  speculation 
No  less  an  authority  than  A.  T.  Harley  attributes  the  financial 
crisis  of  1884  to  the  same  cause.  The  crash  of  1866  was  largely 
due  to  speculation  in  railroad  stocks;  the  corner  of  Northern 
Pacific  in  1901  caused  a  Wall  Street  panic;  and  every  one  well 
knows  that  today  the  stock  market  is  the  center  of  the  gigantic 
gambling  by  which  every  economic  and  financial  interest  of 
the  nation  is  imperiled. 

Transportation  constitutes  the  very  foundation  of  modern 
society.  If  this  is  subject  to  these  perilous  fluctuations  and  un¬ 
certainties,  is  it  any  wonder  that  our  financial  world  is  so 
unstable?  Let  us  suppose  now  that  the  government  owns  these 
roads.  This  great  field  of  vacillating  value  is  then  removed 
from  the  realm  of  stock  gambling,  redeemed  by  the  substitution 
of  stable  capital  backed  by  government  securities.  These  securi¬ 
ties  have  a  constant  value.  Their  value  is  seldom  or  never 
the  subject  of  speculation  or  uncertainty.  The  interest  will  be 
paid  promptly,  the  principal  will  be  met.  The  field  of  gambling 
is  thus  destroyed  and  the  opportunity  for  this  terrible  disturb¬ 
ing  element  is  removed.  (“Railway  Nationalization,”  p.  9.) 


Advantages  in  Operation. 


Vast  Economies  Possible  Under  Public  Ownership. — It  is 

a  well  known  fact  that  great  saving  could  be  effected  if  the  rail¬ 
roads  of  this  country  should  be  operated  under  one  unified 
system,  such  ^s  would  be  inaugurated  under  public  ownership. 
For  example,  the  salaries  paid  to  railroad  presidents  in  this 
country  are  enormous  and  excessive.  From  $25,000  to  $100,000 
per  year  are  paid  to  these  men,  in  spite  of  the  fact  they  repre¬ 
sent  financial  manipulation  rather  than  any  actual  service  in  the 
management  of  the  railroads.  The  superintendents  are  the  men 
who  are  trained  in  railroading  and  do  the  managing.  Under 
public  ownership  in  Prussia  we  see  the  contrast.  There  the 
president  of  a  railway  division  gets  $2,750  per  year;  the  Minister 
of  Public  Works,  who  is  general  head  of  the  government  system, 
$9,000  per  year.  These  salaries  cannot  be  said  to  be  insufficient, 
for  they  secure  for  the  government  the  very  best  men  for  this 
work.  In  this  country  our  college  presidents  often  receive  only 
from  $3,000  to  $5,000  per  year,  and  the  members  of  the  presi¬ 
dent’s  cabinet  get  only  $8,000.  The  total  saving  estimated  by 
Mr.  Lewis,  in  his  “Railway  Nationalization,”  on  this  alone  would 
be  $9,000,000  per  year. 

Another  item  that  would  be  saved  under  public  ownership 
would  be  in  the  abolition  of  “law  expenses.”  The  railroads  ex¬ 
pend  in  a  single  year  as  high  as  five  million  dollars  for  this 
purpose.  It  is  not  at  all  unlikely  that  four-fifths  of  this  expense 
would  be  saved  under  public  ownership.  This  would  amount  to 
$4,000,000  per  year.  Another  saving  would  be  effected  by  the 
abolition  of  unnecessary  competitive  advertising.  The  saving 
on  this  is  estimated  at  $18,000,000  per  year.  Other  items  are — 
increase  of  passenger  service  due  to  the  lowering  of  rates,  the 


295 


abolition  of  passes,  the  exclusive  use  of  the  shortest  routes  in 
passenger  and  freight  service,  the  consolidation  of  freight  and 
passenger  depots,  etc. 

Upon  each  of  these  items  Mr.  Lewis  has  made  the  most  care¬ 
ful  estimate  based  on  the  unquestioned  data  of  past  railroad 
experience  in  this  country  (see  pages  28  to  38). .  The  total 
amount  of  saving  possible  under  public  ownership  is  estimated 
at  $191,879,000  per  year.  Another  very  careful  estimate  has 
been  made  by  Prof.  Ely,  in  his  “Socialism  and  Social  Reform” 
He  places  the  figures  at  $200,000,000  per  year.  As  these  esti¬ 
mates  are  based  upon  experience  of  the  railroads  and  the  reports 
of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  it  is  reasonably  certain 
that  they  are  practically  correct. 

With  such  an  enormous  saving  as  this  every  year,  consider 
for  a  moment  what  vast  improvements  would  be  possible  in  our 
system  of  transportation. 

2.  A  Better  System  for  the  Improvement  and  Extension  of 
Railroad  Facilities.— The  really  great  and  important  railway 
undertakings  of  this  country  have  in  every  case  been  initiated 
not  by  private  enterprise,  but  by  the  government.  Such  was 
notoriously  the  case  in  the  building  of  the  great  trans-conti¬ 
nental  systems,  such  as  the  Union  Pacific,  Northern  Pacific  and 
Southern  Pacific.  A  vast  empire  of  land  and  millions  of  dollars 
were  given  outright  to  these  corporations  in  order  to  get  them 
to  build  the  railroads. 

And  this  shows  how  empty  is  the  objection  raised  against 
public  ownership  on  the  ground  that  the  government  would  not 
furnish  a  sufficient  initiative  required  for  great,  progressive  un¬ 
dertakings  and  for  extensions  and  improvements.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  it  was  the  government  in  nearly  every  case  and  not 
private  capital  that  made  the  vast  railway  systems  of  today 
possible. 

And  besides,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  government 
would  be  much  more  prompt  in  the  inauguration  of  improve¬ 
ments  and  new  inventions  than  private  companies  are.  The 
experience  of  foreign  nations  demonstrates  that  improvements 
are  made  even  more  rapidly  there  than  here.  The  reluctance  and 
tardiness  with  which  new  inventions  and  safety  devices  and 
similar  improvements  are  adopted  by  our  private  railway  sys¬ 
tems  in  this  country  is  strikingly  illustrated  in  the  case  of  air 
brakes,  the  safety  coupler,  and  grade  crossings. 

And  as  for  a  systeip  of  extension  and  the  building  of  new 
lines,  it  is  clear  that  the  needs  of  new  districts  are  much  more 
likely  to  be  provided  for  by  public  enterprise  than  by  private. 
Private  roads  will  build  only  when  there  is  a  sufficient  traffic  to 
ensure  a  big  profit.  The  public  which  has  service  rather  than 
profit  for  its  purpose  will  build  where  the  roads  are  needed.  A 
comparison  of  railway  mileage  in  the  United  States  shows  that 
the  present  distribution  is  very  unjust  to  the  various  sections. 
Some  are  overcrowded  with  roads  and  others  are  almost  entirely 
neglected.  This  is  of  course  natural  under  the  system  of  private 
ownership,  since  every  railway  company  will  try  to  crowd  its 
systems  into  the  more  densely  populated  parts  of  the  country 
in  order  to  win  from  the  other  companies  the  paying  business. 
And  similarly  all  the  companies  will  naturally  decline  to  build 
their  roads  into  the  sections  that  are  least  populated  and  there¬ 
fore  need  them  the  most.  The  welfare  of  the  people  demands 
exactly  the  opposite  policy.  And  under  public  ownership  this  is 
always  attained.  We  see  it  splendidly  illustrated  in  New  Zea¬ 
land  and  in  our  own  postal  system  here. 

Methods  of  Nationalization. 

1.  Purchase  of  Stock. — In  Germany,  we  are  told  by  Mr. 
Russell,  in  his  “Uprising  of  the  Many,”  the  German  government 


296 


began  by  buying  stock  first  in  one  and  then  another  of  the 
various  railway  systems,  and  thus  gradually  established  the 
government  ownership  of  about  seven-eighths  of  the  total  mile¬ 
age  there.  However,  the  foreign  nations  have  been  much  more 
careful  in  safeguarding  their  interests  in  the  matter  of  railways 
than  have  our  people  in  America.  This  makes  the  provision  for 
public  ownership  easier.  The  Prussian  law  of  1838*  established  a 
system  of  progressive  taxation  on  the  net  earnings  of  the  rail¬ 
road  companies.  All  moneys  realized  from  these  taxes  were 
to  be  used  by  the  state  in  purchasing  railway  shares.  And  then 
all  income  on  such  stock  must  be  used  for  the  saine  purpose  and 
no  stock  so  purchased  can  again  be  put  on  the  market.  In  this 
way  the  railroads  are  made  to  provide  beforehand  the  money 
with  which  to  purchase  them.  The  railroads  buy  themselves  out. 
In  this  way  the  transition  of  public  ownership  works  itself  out 
automatically.  In  addition  to  this  the  government  also  built  and 
extended  railroads. 

The  transition  was  gradual.  For  thirty  years  private  and 
public  roads  were  operated  side  by  side  in  competition.  And  as 
a  result  of  this  experience  the  government  more  and  more  de¬ 
termined  that  public  ownership  was  the  correct  policy. 

2.  Outright  Purchase. — In  Switzerland  the  method  was 

somewhat  different.  Anticipating  the  possibility  of  national  pur¬ 
chase,  the  government  had  passed,  in  1883  and  1895,  a  law  sub¬ 
jecting  the  railway  companies’  accounts  to  rigid  regulation  and 
inspection.  This  became  the  basis  for  the  purchase  later  on. 
The  question  of  the  purchase  of  the  railroads  was  submitted  to 
a  general  referendum  in  1898,  and  was  carried  by  an  overwhelm¬ 
ing  majority.  The  details  of  the  method  of  purchase  were  pro¬ 
vided  carefully  and  the  government  appropriated  $200,000,000  in 
1899  for  the  purchasing  of  the  roads.  In  accord  with  the  laws 
previously  passed,  the  government  was  allowed  to  take  posses¬ 
sion  of  the  roads  on  giving  three  years’  notice  and  paying  25 
times  the  average  net  profits  for  the  ten  years  preceding  the 
announcement  of  purchase.  Or  the  government  could  pay  the 
construction  value — whichever  method  of  computation  produced 
the  larger  sum,  deduction  being  made  for  any  sum  necessary 
to  bring  the  road  up  to  a  standard  condition.  The  final  sum 
actually  paid  for  the  four  railroads  now  in  the  government  pos¬ 
session  was  $186,078,000.  (“R’ys,  T.  &  P.,”  p.  362.) 

In  general  the  methods  of  securing  government  ownership 
have  been  a  gradual  purchase  of  one  after  another  of  the  sys¬ 
tems.  In  some  cases,  however,  as  in  Switzerland  and  Italy,  the 
whole  system  has  been  taken  over  practically  at  once,  and  the 
money  appropriated  out  of  the  general  government  funds  for 
this  purpose. 

3.  Eminent  Domain. — And  if  the  railroads  should  refuse  to 
sell,  the  government  always  has  at  hand  the  right  to  eminent 
domain — a  perfectly  legal  and  constitutional  method  of  forcing 
sale  and  one  with  which  the  railroads  and  the  public  are  per¬ 
fectly  familiar. 

The  experience  of  Cincinnati  is  interesting  and  illuminating. 
It  is  the  only  city  in  the  world  that  owns  a  railroad.  It  was 
built  by  the  city,  1869-1879.  The  city  issued  bonds  and  built  the 
road  and  leaser  it  to  a  private  company.  This  company  pays 
such  a  rental  that  it  covers  all  the  cost  of  the  bonds,  interest 
and  all.  Under  the  terms  of  the  lease  the  company  has  recently 
built  some  $3,000,000  terminal  facilities  and  a  $750,000  bridge  in 
the  city  and  it  turns  over  a  clear  profit  of  $450,000  to  the  city 
annually.  In  other  words,  by  building  and  owning  this  railroad 
the  city  of  Cincinnati  has  acquired  a  property  now  valued  at 
$40,000,000,  is  paying  for  it  out  of  the  proceeds  it  makes  and  lay¬ 
ing  aside  for  the  city  funds  nearly  half  a  million  every  year  in 
clear  profits  over  and  above  all  expenditures  for  interest  on 


297 


bonds,  sinking  funds  and  all.  (Pamphlet  published  by  the  Board 
of  Trustees  of  the  Cincinnati  and  Southern  Railway,  Cincinnati, 
Ohio;  also  bulletin  of  the  Johns-Hopkins  University  for  Janu- 
ary-February,  1894,  on  “The  Cincinnati  Railway.”) 

In  some  cases  the  establishment  of  government  ownership 
is  effected  by  the  government  foreclosing  on  mortgages  which 
it  holds  upon  the  railway  systems.  The  Social  Democrats  in 
the  state  legislature  of  Wisconsin  have  repeatedly  urged  this 
as  a  possible  method  for  the  United  States.  Between  1876  and 
1912,  739  different  railway  companies  in  the  United  States  have 
been  in  the  hands  of  receivers,  that  is,  practically  owned  by  the 
government.  In  addition  to  this,  988  other  roads  have  been  sold 
under  foreclosure  during  the  last  37  years.  (Statistical  Abstract 
of  the  *United  States,  1912,  p.  327.)  Such  situations  would  afford 
splendid  opportunities  for  an  alert  government  bent  on  public 
ownership  to  get  possession  of  railroads.  The  Socialists  sug¬ 
gest  that  whenever  this  occurs  and  a  road  is  taken  over  by  the 
government,  reorganized  and  put  upon  a  paying  basis,  that  in¬ 
stead  of  handing  it  back  to  private  enterprise,  it  shall  be  kept. 
Had  this  policy  been  pursued  up  to  the  present  time  a  very 
large  proportion  of  the  total  railway  mileage  of  the  country 
would  already  belong  to  the  government. 

Some  object  to  public  ownership  because  they  think  that  the 
government  would  have  to  contract  an  enormous  debt  in  order 
to  acquire  the  roads.  On  the  contrary,  however,  as  we.  have 
shown,  it  is  possible  for  the  railroads  to  be  nationalized  without 
the  increase  of  taxation,  or  any  additional  burdening  of  the 
people. 

They  can  be  made  to  pay  for  themselves. 

According  to  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  the 
actual  value  of  the  railroads  of  the  country  was  less  than 
$9,000,000,000  in  1900.  The  value  now  could  not  exceed  $11,000,- 
000,000  or  $12,000,000,000.  Let  us  take  the  latter  figure  as  a 
basis.  The  government  could  borrow  money  on  bonds  at  prob¬ 
ably  two  per  cent;  certainly  not  more  than  three  per  cent.  We 
will  take  the  latter.  The  interest  charge  then  on  the  debt  cre¬ 
ated,  if  we  paid  the  $12,000,000,000  for  the  railroads  and  bor¬ 
rowed  the  money  at  three  per  cent  would  be  $360,000,000  per 

year.  _ 

But  the  present  net  income  of  the  railroads  is  $833,000,000. 
(See  Van  Wagenen’s  “Government  Ownership  of  Railways,” 
G.  P.  Putnam’s  Sons,  New  York,  1910,  pp.  46-7.>  On  that  basis 
the  people  of  the  United  States  by  purchasing  the  railways 
would  be  $437,000,000  to  the  good  per  year  from  the  very 
outset. 

However,  even  if  it  should  be  necessary  in  order  to  facilitate 
the  matter,  for  the  government  to  assume  a  debt  of  a  few  million 
dollars,  it  would  be  infinitely  wiser  to  do  so  than  to  allow  the 
present  condition  to  continue.  The  railroads  are  capitalized,  at 
over  nineteen  billion  dollars  ($19,208,935,081  in  1911),  of  which 
certainly  more  than  one-half  and  in  many  cases  as  high  as  two- 
thirds  represents  no  investment  whatever.  And  yet  the  rail¬ 
roads  are  managed,  rates  are  fixed,  expenses  of  operation  man¬ 
ipulated  in  such  a  way  as  to  compel  the  people  of  the  United 
States  to  pay  over  to  them  enough  tribute  to  give  them  a  high 
rate  of  interest  on  the  total  capitalization.  Furthermore,  the 
capitalization  of  the  railroads  is  increasing  every  year.  It  in¬ 
creases  at  the  rate  of  about  $650,000,000  per  year.  And  this 
increasing  capitalization  means  simply  that  the  private  owner¬ 
ship  of  railroads  is  the  means  by  which  the  capitalistic  classes 
are  increasing  their  rates  of  plunder  year  after  year  indefinitely. 
If  that  rate  keeps  up  for  10  years  the  results  would  be  appalling. 
It  would  mean  that  by  that  time  the  people  of  the  United 
States  would  be  compelled  to  pay,  through  transportation 


298 


charges,  interest  upon  a  vast  sum  of  money  amounting  to  25 
billions  of  dollars.  By  the  side  of  such  a  calatnity,  the  public 
debt  of  a  few  millions  that  would  be  necessary  to  buy  the  roads 
would  be  only  a  drop  in  the  bucket. 

Is  there  any  other  way  of  escape  from  this  terrible  threat  of 
increasing  capitalization  than  through  public  ownership  by 
whatever  means  may  be  reasonably  safe  and  just? 

(c)  PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  OWNERSHIP  OF  TELE¬ 
GRAPH  AND  TELEPHONE  LINES  COMPARED. 

(Compiled  from  articles  by  Frank  Parsons  in  Encyclopedia  of 
Social  Reform;  article  by  Charles  Edward  Russell  in 
Pearson’s  for  March,  1914;  speech  of  David 
J.  Lewis  in  the  House  of  Represen¬ 
tatives,  Jan.  16,  1914.) 

United  States  Telegraph  Rates  the  Highest— Average  Receipt 
from  a  Telegram  in  Different  Countries. 


Cents. 

Luxembourg  .  9.0 


France 

Japan  . . 

Belgium . 

Holland  . 

Sweden  . 

New  Zealand 


12.0 
...  12.3 
...  14.0 
...  15.0 
...  15.7 
...  15.7 

WHAT  WE  PAY 


Cents. 

Great  Britain  .  17.2 

Switzerland  .  17.2 

Germany  .  18.0 

Italy  .  20.0 

Denmark  .  22.0 

United  States  . .  36.0 


Messages. 


New  York  to  Harrisburg,  Pa . 

New  York  to  Ogdensberg,  N.  Y . 

New  York  to  Oswego,  N.  Y . 

New  York  to  Columbus,  O . 

New  York  to  Fall  Elver,  Mass . 

New  York  to  Worcester,  (Mass . 

New  York  to  Syracuse,  N.  Y . 

New  York  to  Richmond,  Va . 

New  York  to  Bangor,  Me . 

New  York  to  Raleigh,  N.  C . 

New  York  to  Charleston,  S.  C . 

New  York  to  Baltimore,  Md . 

New  York  to  Manchester,  N.  H . 


New  York  to  Portland,  Me.  .  .  . 
New  York  to  Lowell,  Mass... 
New  York  to  Augusta,  Me.  .  .  . 
New  York  to  Wilmington,  Del. 

New  York  to  Chicago  . 

London  to  Liverpool . 

London  to  Edinburgh . 


Falmouth  to  Aberdeen  . 

Paris  to  Boulogne . 

Paris  to  Dijon . 

Paris  to  Belfort . 

Paris  to  Bourdeaux . 

Paris  to  Bayonne . 

Paris  to  Marseilles . 

Calais  to  Marseilles . 

Berlin  to  Hamburg . 

Berlin  to  Nuremburg . 

Hamburg  to  Cologne . 

Berlin  to  Frankfort . 

Berlin  to  Cologne . 

Berlin  to  Munich . 

Schuls  to  Geneva . 

Auckland  to  Bluff  . 

l*For  twelve  words. 

2*Half  a  franc;  real  value  9  and  6-10  cents. 

3*The  Swiss  rate  is  5  cents  for  each  telegram  and  Vz  cent  a 
word. 

In  the  United  States  address  and  signature  are  sent  free;  in 
Europe  they  are  charged  for.  But  this  difference  is  largely 
counterbalanced  by  the  European  custom  of  code  addresses. 

Inefficient  Service. 

What  do  we  get  for  the  extra  money  we  expend  for  this 
service?  On  every  one  of  the  175,000,000  telegrams  we  send 
yearly  we  pay  from  twice  to  five  times  as  much  as  we  should 


•a 

Distanc 

in 

miles. 

Rate 
for  ter 
word*. 

o 

30  cents 

2 

cents 

.  .  375 

35  cents 

2 

cents 

..  324 

35  cents 

2 

cents 

. . .637 

40  cents 

3 

cents 

.  .  183 

30  cents 

2 

cents 

.  .  193 

30  cents 

2 

cents 

.  .  293 

35  cents 

2 

cents 

40  cents 

3 

cents 

40  cents 

3 

cents 

50  cents 

3 

cents 

.  .  739 

60  cents 

3 

cents 

30  cents 

2 

cents 

.  .  292 

35  cents 

2 

cents 

..  265 

30  cents 

2 

cents 

35  cents 

2 

cents 

30  cents 

2 

cents 

40  cents 

3 

cents 

30  cents 

2 

cents 

50  cents 

3 

cents 

1*12  cents 

1 

cent 

1*12  cents 

1 

cent 

1*12  cents 

1 

cent 

.  .  670 

1*12  cents 

1 

cent 

2*10  cents 

1 

cent 

2*10  cents 

1 

cent 

2*10  cents 

1 

cent 

2*10  cents 

1 

cent 

2*10  cents 

1 

cent 

2*10  cents 

1 

cent 

2*10  cents 

1 

cent 

12  cents 

1 

cent 

12  cents 

1 

cent 

12  cents 

1 

cent 

12  cents 

1 

cent 

12  cents 

1 

cent 

12  cents 

1 

cent 

.  .  156 

3*10  cents 

% 

cent 

.  .  900 

12  cents 

1 

cent 

299 


pay  for  the  like  convenience  in  Europe,  Asia,  Africa  or  Austral¬ 
asia.  Why  is  this?  We  spend  every  year  more  than  $50,000,000 
for  telegraph  messages.  If  we  had  in  this  country  such  rates 
as  prevail  in  every  other  country  we  should  have  the  same 
service  for  less  than  $20,000,000. 

What  do  we  get  for  the  extra  $30,000,000  or  $35,000,000? 

Not  any  greater  efficiency  or  public  convenience,  certainly. 
There  is  a  superstition  that  we  do,  but  it  is  wholly  of  interested 
origin;  the  beneficiaries  of  the  present  arrangement  and  the 
influences  they  control  foster  it  diligently,  and  it  goes  to  pieces 
at  the  first  examination  of  facts.  Efficiency  is  the  test,  you 
know.  Then  kindly  look  at  this.  Although  we  pay  such  mon¬ 
strous  prices  for  it  we  do  not  get  an  efficient  telegraph  service; 
it  does  not  serve  the  people  well,  but  very  ill. 

In  New  Zealand,  with  a  rate  of  12  cents  for  twelve  words,  the 
average  annual  telegraph  business  is  809  telegrams  for  each  100 
of  population.  In  the  United  States,  where  the  rate  is  from  25 
cents  to  $1  for  ten  words,  the  annual  average  is  110  telegrams 
for  each  100  of  population. 

At  present  we  have  in  the  United  States  about  one-tenth  of 
the  telegraph  facilities  that  we  ought  to  have.  That’  is  because 
the  telegraph  companies,  always  under  the  burden  of  paying 
dividends  on  watered  stock  and  providing  for  many  melons, 
cannot  afford  to  extend  their  lines.  Thus  we  have  in  the  whole 
United  States,  with  100,000,000  population,  only  6,828  real  tele¬ 
graph  offices.  This  will  astonish  you,  very  likely,  but  it  is  the 
fact.'  The  remaining  22,282  of  which  the  telegraph  companies 
boast,  are  railroad  station  houses,  or  signal  towers,  devoted  to 
railroad  business  and  handling  communications,  if  at  all,  with 
great  difficulty  and  delay. 

In  France  and  in  Luxembourg  there  are  more  telegraph  of¬ 
fices  than  post  offices.  In  Belgium  and  Germany  every  post 
office  is  a  telegraph  office.  In  the  other  countries  of  the  world, 
except  ours,  you  can  telegraph  from  practically  every  post  of¬ 
fice.  In  the  United  States  we  have  one  telegraph  office  to 
every  7.7  post  offices. 

The  private  telegraph  companies  of  the  United  States,  goug¬ 
ing  their  employees  for  the  sake  of  dividends,  compelling  them 
to  work  long  hours,  taking  of  their  necessities  every  mean  ad¬ 
vantage,  get  from  each  operator  an  annual  average  of  3,487 
telegrams  transmitted.  The  government  of  New  Zealand,  treat¬ 
ing  its  employees  with  humane  consideration,  providing  for 
them  an  eight-hour  day,  a  six-day  week,  a  weekly  half-holiday, 
an  old  age  pension  and  an  ’insurance  against  accidents,  gets 
from  each  operator  an  annual  average  of  3,713  telegrams  trans¬ 
mitted. 

Mr.  Lewis  found  27  different  acts  or  processes  in  the  handling 
of  each  telegram  by  a  private  company,  16  of  them  being  wholly 
superfluous  from  any  point  of  view  of  the  public  concern,  and 
put  in  to  make  sure  that  the  company  did  not  overlook  a  cent. 

Mr.  Lewis  also  found  in  the  accounting  department  of  the 
telegraph  companies  47  different  acts  or  processes  that  had  been 
found  unnecessary  under  government  ownership.  Who  do  you 
think  pays  for  the  47? 

Enormous  Profits. 

The  acknowledged  net  profits  of  the  Western  Union  Tele¬ 
graph  Company  in  1912  were  $6,023,971.  The  Postal  Telegraph 
Company  is  owned  by  a  holding  concern  called  the  Mackay 
Companies.  Its  profits  therefore  are  neatly  concealed  from 
observation,  but  the  Mackay  Companies  in  1912  declared  divi¬ 
dends  amounting  to  $4,128,491,  although  it  is  admitted  that  the 
profits  were  larger.  Putting  these  two  sums  together,  we  have 


too 

$11,052,462  as  one  year’s  profits  from  the  telegraph  business  in 
the  United  States.  • 

Telephone  Rates  Highest  in  the  United  States. 

ANNUAL  CHARGE  FOR  TELEPHONE  (FLAT  RATE). 

The  Hague,  Holland . 


Copenhagen,  Denmark  . . . 


Auckland,  N.  Z . 

Amsterdam,  Holland 
Christiania,  Norway. 
Rotterdam.  Holland 

Buda-Pesth,  Hungar; 

Paris,  France . 


$26.00 

24.44 

New  Haven,  Conn...., 
Oakland,  Cal  . . 

32.00 

34.00 

34.09 

36.00 

21.44 

Philadelphia,  Pa . . 

Washington,  D.  C _ 

Cincinnati,  O . 

Baltimore,  Md . 

Denver.  Col . 

- 100.00 

36.00 

Boston,  Mass . 

57.90 

77.20 

43.20 

San  Francisco,  Cal. 

New  York  City  . 

Seattle,  Wash . 

The  telephones  in  all  these  countries  abroad  are  owned  by 
the  government  and  operated  as  part  of  the  post  office  system 
tor  the  Common  Good.  That  is  the  reason  the  rates  are  so 
cheap.  The  telephones  in  our  country  are  owned  by  the  private 
interests  and  operated  for  Private  Greed.  This  is  true  reason 
the  rates  are  so  dear. 

Inefficiency. 

In  Switerland  a  long-distance  telephone  conversation  over 
sixty-two  miles  of  line  costs  10  cents;  in  New  York  a  similar 
conversation  from  Park  Row,  Manhattan,  to  Court  Street, 
Brooklyn,  a  mile  and  a  half,  costs  10  cents,  and  to  telephone 
sixty-two  miles  costs  half  a  dollar. 

In  New  Zealand  you  can  telephone  620  miles  for  60  cents. 
In  the  United  States  you  pay  25  cents  to  telephone  12  miles. 

The  employees  of  the  government-owned  telephone  service 
of  Norway  handle  each  an  average  of  146,854  calls  a  year;  the 
employees  of  the  melon-owned  telephone  service  of  the  United 
States  handle  each  an  average  of  58,134  calls  a  year. 

The  following  table  shows  the  rates  charged  by  the  Bell 
Telephone  Company  when  it  had  to  meet  competition  and  after 
it  had  either  driven  out  or  had  absorbed  its  competitor: 


City. 

Richmond,  Va . 

Bell 

rate 

before 

com¬ 

petition 

began. 

Bell 
rate 
while 
com¬ 
petition 
was  on. 

Bell 

rate 

when 

com¬ 

petition 

ended. 

York,  Pa . 

1  £ 

4  «  2 

A  Q 

San  Jose,  Cal . 

i. 0 
o  A 

4a 

#  A 

Dubuque,  Iowa . 

oU 

OU 

A  ® 

Winona,  Minn . 

4*2 

1  9 

43 

A  9 

Savannah,  Ga . . 

JL  u 

4o 

o  ft 

Mobile,  Ala . . . 

X  o 

1  R 

A  • 

Lynchburg,  Va . 

lo 

1  9 

A  O 

Roanoke,  Va . 

Xjj 

o  A 

45 

A  0 

Norfolk,  Va . 

ou 

4# 

ft  A 

Oswego,  N.  Y . 

Kenosha,  Wis.  .  . . . . 

. 

. .  45 

TtU 

30 

9A 

iU 

3f 

A  0 

Iowa  City,  Iowa  . 

u  V 

94 

4Z 

9  ft 

Tampa,  Fla . 

9  0 

oo 

o  U 

42 

Average  . 

$23 

”$49 

Government  Ownership  of  Electrical  Means  of  Communication. 

(From  Report  to  the  Postmaster  General  by  a  Special  Com¬ 
mittee  of  the  Post  Office  Department.) 

The  United  States  alone  of  the  leading  nations  has  left  to 
private  enterprises  the  ownership  and  operation  of  the  telegraph 
and  telephone  facilities. 

In  1843  this  government  aided  in  the  construtcion  and 
assumed  as  a  part  of  its  postal  duties  the  operation  of  the  first 
electric  telegraph.  But  on  March  4,  1847,  because  of  the  un¬ 
willingness  of  Congress  to  authorize  any  extension  of  the  serv¬ 
ice  then  in  operation  and  because  of  deficit  in  the  postal  finances 
the  control  of  this  facility  was  surrendered  to  private  hands. 
Capitalization  of  Telegraph  Companies. 

According  to  the  best  available  data,  the  telegraph  plant  of 
this  country  in  1912  .included  about  247,000  miles  of  pole  line 


301 


carrying  about  1,800,000  miles  of  wire.  The  capitalization  of  the 
land  wires,  segregated,  is  estimated  at  $150,000,000;  including  the 
ocean  wires  and  submarine  cables,  the  capitalization  probably 
would  amount  to  $220,000,000.  So  far  as  the  public  generally 
is  concerned,  the  entire  telegraph  service  is  owned  and  oper¬ 
ated  by  two  companies,  their  lines  practically  duplicating  each 
other  in  most  sections  of  the  country. 

Telegraph  facilities  have  not  been  extended  to  the  small 
towns  and  villages  along  with  the  government  postal  facilities, 
nor  has  the  cost  of  the  service  been  reduced  in  the  inverse 
proportion  that  would  seem  to  be  warranted  by  the  increasing 
volume  of  business  transacted.  Neither  has  the  volume  of  busi¬ 
ness  in  this  country,  in  proportion  to  the  population,  been  as 
great  as  in  countries  where  this  facility  is  owned  and  operated 
governmentally.  This  fact  unquestionably  is  attributable  to 
prohibitive  rates  and  the  failure  of  the  companies  to  extend  the 
service  to  territory  which  promises  small  profits. 

An  official  report  of  the  postmaster  general  of  Great  Britain 
in  1911  shows  that  between  1869  (the  year  the  British  govern¬ 
ment  took  possession  of  the  telegraph)  and  1900  the  number 
of  messages  handled  in  that  country  increased  thirteenfold, 
while  the  population  increased  but  30  per  cent.  During  the 
same  period  the  population  of  the  United  States  increased  100 
per  cent,  and  yet  the  number  of  telegraph  messages  handled 
increased  but  eightfold. 

In  1912  the  number  of  messages  handled  in  this  country  was 
barely  in  excess  of  one  per  capita.  In  New  Zealand,  where  the 
telegraphs  are  owned  and  operated  by  the  government,  the 
number  was  more  than  eight  per  capita. 

Statistics  show  that  although  the  United  States,  outranks  all 
other  countries  in  postal  transactions  per  capita,  in  respect  to 
telegraphs  it  is  outranked  by  eight  other  countries. 

All  of  the  important  countries,  the  United  States,  Canada  and 
Mexico  excepted,  have  bound  themselves  by  an  international 
agreement  to  observe  uniform  regulations  in  the  administration 
of  their  telegraph  service.  These  regulations,  with  a  view,  to 
affording  the  people  the  most  efficient  service  at  the  lowest 
price,  require  the  use  of  the  latest  and  best  improvements  in 
the  telegraphic  art,  and  prescribe  the  manner  and  method  of 
receiving,  transmitting  and  delivering  telegrams  and  the  rate 
of  toll  to  be  collected.  The  privately  owned  telegraph  com¬ 
panies  of  the  United  States,  Canada  and  Mexico,  to  the  detri¬ 
ment  of  the  people,  have  remained  outsiders  to  these  interna¬ 


tional  rules  and  regulations. 

Effect  of  Telephone  on  Telegraph  Service. 

The  postmaster  general  of  Great  Britain  reported  in  June, 
1911,  that  in  1907  the  telegraph  traffic  of  that  country  com¬ 
menced  to  show  a  diminution,  owing  to  the  growing  use  of  the 
telephone.  The  like  effect  in  the  United  States  is  shown  by 
statistics.  The  statement  below  shows  the  average  daily  tele¬ 
phone  connections  of  the  associated  Bell  companies  between  the 
years  1900  and  1910  and  the  annual  number  of  messages  trans¬ 
mitted  by  the  Western  Union  Telegraph  Company  during  the 
same  period. 

Average  daily  connec-  Number  of  message* 
tions  of  the  associated  transmitted  annually  by 
Bell  telephone  com-  the  Western  Union  Tele- 
panies.  graph  Company. 

1900 .  5,817,514 

1905  . 13,912,551 

1906  . 16,940,000 

1907  . 18,624,000 

1108 :: . 18,962,397 

TSo9  20,342,435 

i9i5;:;;;: . 22,294,010 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  during  the  decade  to  which  the 
foregoing  figures  relate,  while  the  population  of  our  country 


63,167,78; 

67,477,320 

71,847,082 

74,804,551 

62,371,287 

68,053,439 

75,135,405 


302 


was  increasing  approximately  18  per  cent  (actually  17.8  per  cent) 
the  average  daily  telephony  connections  increased  287  per  cent 
and  the  number  of  telegraph  messages  only  18  per  cent.  The 
use  of  the  telephone  in  all  walks  of  life  is  steadily  increasing, 
while  the  use  of  the  telegraph  is  relatively  stationary  and  there¬ 
fore  decreasing. 

The  telegraph  companies  have  already  lost  for  the  most  part 
the  short  distance  business  owing  to  the  development  of  the 
toll  telephone  service,  and  they  will  probably  lose  much  of  the 
long  distance  business  when  the  toll  rates  become  adjusted  on 
a  cost  basis.  Statistics  of  the  telegraph  and  telephone  traffic 
in  foreign  countries  show  that  the  number  of  long  distance  tele¬ 
phone  communications  greatly  exceeds  the  number  of  telegram*. 
In  Germany,  for  example,  the  ratio  is  6  to  1.  Certainly  the* 
general  trend  in  the  use  of  wire  communications  favors  the 
telephone  at  the  expense  of  the  telgraph. 

This  was  undoubtedly  foreseen  by  the  telegraph  companies 
some  years  ago,  for  it  is  understood  that  before  the  acquisition 
of  the  Western  Union  Company  by  the  American  Telegraph 
and  Telephone  Company  the  former  contemplated  improve¬ 
ments  in  its  system  whereby  the  telephone  would  be  added  to 
the  telegraph  service,  and  this  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  West¬ 
ern  Union  Company  was  an  underlying  reason  why  its  property 
was  acquired  by  the  Bell  interests. 

On  many  of  the  long  distance  telephone  lines  owned  by  the 
American  Telegraph  and  Telephone  Company,  the  telegraph 
feature  has  been  superimposed  and  the  same  wires  are  today 
carrying  both  telegraph  and  telephone  messages  simultaneously. 

Telegraph  Systems  Inadequate  for  Postal  Needs. 

The  acquisition  of  the  telegraph  service  of  the  country  would 
necessitate  taking  over  the  duplicate  plants  of  the  two  com¬ 
panies  controlling  the  service  with  their  duplicate  expenses  of 
maintenance.  Unquestionably  one  could  be  made  to  serve  the 
same  territory.  Furthermore,  and  of  great  importance',  is  the 
fact  that  even  the  entire  plants  of  the  two  companies  would  be 
inadequate  for  the  purpose  of  the  government,  because  their 
facilities  have  been  extended  only  to  profitable  territory. 
Should  the  government  resume  control  and  operate  this  service 
it  would  be  with  the  object  of  extending  the  facilities  in  the 
interests  of  the  people,  and  hence  regardless  of  profit. 

Assuming  that  the  poles  of  the  present  telegraph  system 
would  sustain  the  increased  number  of  wires  necessary  to  super¬ 
impose  the  telephone  feature,  the  expense  of  constructing,  equip¬ 
ping  throughout  with  coppr  wire,  loading  the  same  and  provid¬ 
ing  the  extra  circuits  required,  could  not  be  estimated  at  less 
than  $75,000,000.  Add  this  to  the  estimated  value  of  the  tele¬ 
graphic  land  lines  ($150,000,000),  and  it  will  be  seen  that  the 
cost  would  be  equal  to  $225,000,000,  or  $25,000,000  in  exce&s  of 
the  estimated  value  of  the  interurban  and  long  distance  tele¬ 
phone  network.  The  expense  of  equipping  the  latter  system 
for  telegraphy  would  involve  only  the  cost  of  the  instruments 
and  would  therefore  be  negligible. 

In  view  of  the  foregoing,  it  is  the  opinion  of  your  committee 
that  it  would  be  unwise  from  a  commercial  standpoint  for  the 
government  to  acquire  the  telegraph  systems  ot  the  country. 

There  is  a  radical  difference  between  the  policies  of  a  public 
and  a  private  monopoly,  both  as  regards  the  extension  of  serv¬ 
ice  and  the  fixing  of  rates.  In  the  extension  of  service  the 
determining  factor  with  the  government  is  the  needs  of  the 
people;  with  the  private  monopoly  the  consideration  of  profit. 
The  effect  of  the  application  of  these  two  policies  to  similar 
public  utilities  is  shown  by  comparison  between  the  present 

universal  extension  of  the  mail  facilities  and  the  limited  exten- 

r 


303 


sion  of  the  telegraph  and  telephone  facilities.  The  private 
monopoly  has  no  incentive  to  extend  its  facilities  to  unprofitable 
territory,  but  the  government  must  serve  all  the  people.  This 
universal  service  is  accomplished  by  an  equalization  of  rates. 
In  fixing  rates,  the  policy  of  this  government  is  to  superimpose 
no  charge  for  taxation,  but  simply  to  see  to  it  that  the  service 
as  a  whole  is  self-supporting.  The  private  monopoly,  on  the 
other  hand,  must  make  a  profit,  and  in  providing  for  this  tends 
to  increase  its  rates  to  the  highest  point  that  will  not,  by  so 
greatly  restricting  the  volume  of  business,  impair  the  aggregate 
profit. 

The  postal  service  maintains  about  64,000  offices  and  stations 
and  employs  about  290,000  persons.  The  telephone  service 
maintains  about  50,000  offices  and  employs  about  200,000.  Were 
these  two  services  merged  and  operated  under  government  con¬ 
trol  it  would  be  feasible  to  transfer  a  large  number  of  telephone 
offices  to  post  office  buildings,  and  thus  greatly  reduce  the 
aggregate  expense  for  quarters.  Furthermore,  as  the  majority 
of  the  telephone  employes  are  operators  who  require  no  special 
technical  training,  the  merging  of  the  two  forces  would  result  in 
a  material  reduction  in  the  total  number  of  employes  required. 
Furthermore,  it  is  understood  that  the  automatic  and  semi¬ 
automatic  equipment  is  rapidly  approaching  perfection,  and 
should  this  be  accomplished  the  adoption  of  such  equipment 
would  bring  about  a  still  further  reduction  in  force. 

Your  committee  has  no  doubt  that  the  institutional  efficiency 
of  the  telegraph  and  telephone  services  in  this  country  would 
be  increased  by  government  ownership.  The  statistics  in  the 
appendixes  hereto  show  that  in  the  United  States  compared  with 
other  countries  the  number  of  telephone  calls  per  employe  is 
relatively  low,  while  the  number  of  mail  pieces  per  employe 
is  relatively  high. 

Cost  and  Payment. 

According  to  the  best  available  data,  the  capitalization  of 
the  long  distance  and  toll  lines  represents  approximately  $200,- 
000,000  and  the  capitalization  of  the  entire  commercial  network 
(exchange  service,  toll  and  long  distance  lines)  approximately 
$900,000,000.  The  cost  to  the  government  would  be  less  than 
the  appraised  value,  since  it  would  be  undesirable  for  the  gov¬ 
ernment  to  purchase  the  real  estate  holdings  of  the  telephone 
companies,  such  as  exchange  and  office  buildings.  Sufficient 
space  in  these  buildings  for  the  exchanges  could  be  leased  until 
accommodations  could  be  provided  in  the  post  offices  and 
stations. 

Recommendations. 

Your  committee  has  reached  the  conclusion  that  the  only 
way  to  afford  to  the  people  the  complete  and  modern  postal 
facilities  that  the  Constitution  makes  it  the  duty  of  the  govern¬ 
ment  to  provide  is  to  put  into  effect  the  following  recommenda¬ 
tions: 

1.  That  Congress  declare  a  government  monopoly  over  all 
telegraph  and  telephone  and  radio  communication  and  such 
other  means  for  the  transmission  of  intelligence  as  may  here¬ 
after  develop. 

2.  That  Congress  acquire  by  purchase  at  this  time  at 
appraised  value  the  commercial  telephone  network,  except  the 
farmer  lines. 

3.  That  Congress  authorize  the  postmaster  general  to  issue 
in  his  discretion  and  under  such  regulations  as  he  may  pre¬ 
scribe,  revocable  licenses  for  the  operation,  by  private  individ¬ 
uals,  associations,  companies  and  corporations,  of  the  telegraph 
service  and  such  parts  of  the  telephone  service  as  may  not  be 
acquired  by  the  government. 


304 


(d)  UNCLE  SAM  IN  PANAMA. 

> 

Meat  Prices  on  the  Isthmus. 


(From  the  National  Handbook  No.  2,  page  11.) 

Commodities  are  sold  by  the  United  States  government  in 
the  Canal  Zone  without  profit.  They  are  purchased  in  the 
United  States,  carried  2,000  miles,  kept,  when  necessary,  in  cold 
storage,  and  delivered  by  Uncle  Sam  to  the  purchaser’s  premises. 
Of  course  profits  enter  into  cost— that  is,  the  profits  of  grower, 
manufacturer,  money  lender,  commission  man,  transportation 
company,  etc.  But  the  government  itself  sells  to  the  consumer 
at  net  cost.  Just  compare  the  following  prices  of  beef,  pub¬ 
lished  last  November  in  the  Canal  Record,  with  current  prices 
in  cities  of  the  United  States,  and  then  consider  what  prices 
might  be  with  evsry  form  of  profit  and  graft  eliminated: 


Beef — Suet,  per  pound . 

Soup,  per  pound . . 

Stew,  per  pound  . 

Plate,  per  pound  . «. . 

Corned,  No.  1,  per  pound . 

Corned,  No.  2,  per  pound . . 

Chuck  roast  (3  pounds  and  over),  per  pound  .  . . . 

Pot  roast,  per  pound . 

Rib  roast,  second *cut  (not  under  3 %  pounds),  per  pound 
Rib  roast,  first  cut  (not  under  3  pounds),  per  pound.... 

Sirloin  roast,  per  pound . . . 

Rump  roast,  per  pound . 

Porterhouse  roast,  per  pound . 

Steak,  chuck,  per  pound . 

Round,  per  pound  . . 

Rib  tier  pound  . 

Sirloin,  per  pound . 

r'  pound . 

Porterhouse  (not  less  than  1%  pounds),  per  pound . 


2 

5 

8 

9 

14 
12 
12 

15 

16 
18 
19 

19 

20 

12% 

13 

18 

19 

19 

20 


Canal  Zone  Laundry. 


(From  the  National  Handbook  No.  2,  page  12.) 

In  parallel  columns  below  are  quoted  comparative  prices  of 
laundry  work  taken  from  the  laundry  lists  of  two  laundries. 
One  is  the  Ancon  Hospital  Laundry,  located  at  Ancon,  Canal 
Zone,  and  operated  by  the  Isthmian  government  for  the  benefit 
of  canal  employes.  The  other  is  a  typical  laundry  list  of  one 
of  the  best  known  laundries  in  Washington,  D.  C.  One  is  run 
by  Uncle  Sam  for  service;  the  other  is  managed  by  private 
business  for  profit.  Look  over  the  list: 

MEN’S  ARTICLES. 


Collars  . 

Cuffs,  pair  . . 
Shirts,  plain 
Shirts,  dress 
Handkerchiefs 
Socks,  pair  .  . 
Undershirts  . 

Drawers  . 

Union  suits  . 
Nightshirts  . . 

Vests  . . 

Coats  . 

Pajamas  . 

Overalls  . 

Jumpers  . 


Collars  . 

Waists,  white 
Handkerchiefs 
Stockings,  pair 
Undershirts  . . 

Drawers  . . 

Combinations  . 

Chemise  . 

Corset  covers  . 
Nightdresses  . 

Aprons  . 

Underskirts  .  . 


WOMEN’S 


rshington, 

Canal  Zone, 

D.  C. 

cents. 

cents. 

•  2% 

1% 

.  5 

3 

.  10 

8 

.  15 

10 

3 

1% 

,  5 

3 

.  8 

5 

8 

5 

16 

8 

10 

5  ;  ' 

25 

10 

,  10  up 

10 

20  up 

10 

15  , 

16 

10 

8 

ES. 

3  up 

1% 

20  up 

10 

3 

1% 

5 

3 

8 

5 

10 

8 

16  up 

12 

10  up 

8  and  12 

10  up 

8  and  12 

15  up 

10  and  12 

5  up 

5 

15  up 

12 

S05 

(e)  IS  UNCLE  SAM  BECOMING  A  SOCIALIST? 

(By  John  C.  Kennedy.) 

The  greatest  engineering  feat  ever  undertaken  on  the  Amer¬ 
ican  continent  is  now  being  successfully  completed  on  the 
Isthmus  of  Panama.  The  United  States  has  accomplished  what 
the  great  French  syndicate  and  other  private  corporations 
absolutely  failed  to  do — it  has  built  the  Panama  Canal. 

Few  of  us  realize  that  in  carrying  out  this  great  undertaking 
Uncle  Sam  found  it  necessary  to  follow  many  of  the  methods 
that  have  long  been  advocated  by  the  Socialist  party.  Private 
corporations  looking  only  for  profits  undertook  to  build  the 
canal  and  failed.  Therefore,  instead  of  turning  the  job  over 
to  another  private  corporation,  Uncle  Sam  decided  to  dig  and 
and  own  and  operate  the  canal  himself. 

No  contracts  were  given  to  capitalists  whereby  they  could 
make  fat  profits.  Government  engineers  prepared  the  plans, 
hired  the  employes  and  directed  the  work  from  the  very  be¬ 
ginning.  This  is  a  principle  for  which  Socialists  have  been 
contending  everywhere.  The  contract  system  is  a  source  of 
inefficiency  and  graft,  and  all  public  work  should  be  done 
directly  by  the  government. 

Scientific  Sanitation. 

In  order  to  build  the  canal  Uncle  Sam  found  it  necessary  to 
control  living  conditions  in  the  Canal  Zone.  The  sanitary  con- 
trol  of  the  district  was  not  left  to  private  individuals  and 
doctors.  An  expert  was  put  in  charge  of  the  whole  matter  and 
he  practically  eliminated  malaria,  yellow  fever  and  other  trop¬ 
ical  diseases.  Swamps  were  drained;  the  breeding  places  of 
mosquitoes  were  destroyed;  adequate  provision  was  made  for 
handling  all  the  garbage  and  waste  matter;  paved  roads  were 
built,  and  in  every  other  way  conditions  were  made  so  sanitary 
that  the  death  rate  has  been  lower  than  in  many  parts  of  the 
United  States. 

Homes  for  the  Workers. 

Thirty-five  thousand  employes  were  required  to  build  the  canal 
and  a  large  number  of  new  buildings  were  needed  to  furnish 
accommodations  for  them.  Uncle  Sam  was  determined  that 
there  should  be  no  hovels  and  slums  in  the  Canal  Zone.  If  the 
erection  of  houses  had  been  left  to  real  estate  speculators, 
doubtless  the  workers  would  have  been  crowded  together  in 
shacks  and  tenements  just  as  they  are  in  the  Chicago  Stock 
Yards  district.  Uncle  Sam  avoided  all  these  evils  by  erecting 
houses  for  the  workers  which  were  spacious,  well  ventilated 
and  sanitary  in  every  particular. 

Reduced  the  Cost  of  Living. 

The  government  soon  discovered  that  it  would  never  do  to 
leave  the  furnishing  of  supplies  in  the  hands  of  private  com¬ 
panies.  The  goods  were  of  inferior  quality  and  the  prices  were 
exorbitant.  Therefore  Uncle  Sam  established  a  series  of  twenty- 
two  stores  along  the  isthmus,  where  the  workers  can  buy  any¬ 
thing  they  want.  The  government  buys  most  of  its  meats  in 
Chicago  and  lays  down  the  strictest  specifications,  so  it  gets 
the  very  best  quality.  Over  four  million  pounds  of  fresh  beef 
have  been  sold  each  year  by  the  government  stores  on  the 
isthmus,  besides  250,000  pounds  of  mutton,  400,000  chickens  and 
a  large  quantity  of  other  meats.  The  sales  included  over  nine 
million  dozen  eggs  per  year  and  enormous  quantities  of  fruits, 
vegetables  and  baked  goods. 

In  order  to  supply  the  best  quality  of  bread,  the  government 
built  a  bakery  of  its  own  which  has  been  furnishing  25,000 


loaves  of  bread  per  day.  It  also  owns  and  operates  an  ice  plant 
which  furnishes  ice  to  the  workers  at  a  reasonable  cost  The 
government  runs  an  ice  cream,  factory,  which  has  been' doing 
a  business  of  over  $80,000  per  year.  It  has  been  running  a 
laundry  which  washes  four  million  pieces  per  year. 

In  short  Uncle  Sam  has  been  furnishing  all  the  necessaries 
o  life  to  the  workers  in  the  Canal  Zone  practically  at  cost. 
Moreover,  everything  supplied  has  been  inspected  by  experts, 
so  the  quality  of  the  goods  has  always  been  assured.  A  price 
list  has  been  published  each  week,  so  there  could  be  no  juggling 
of  prices.  s 


No  Loss  to  the  Government. 

It  must  be’ remembered  that  Uncle  Sam  has  been  conducting 
all  of  these  enterprises  on  the  isthmus  simply  because  he  found 
that  only  in  this  way  could  the  best  living  conditions  and  the 
highest  efficiency  be  obtained.  These  enterprises  have  in  no 
sense  been  philanthropic  measures.  The  government  has  not 
lost  a  single  cent— in  fact,  it  has  made  a  small  profit.  Yet  the 
cost  of  living  on  the  Isthmus  of  Panama— the  cost  of  Chicago 
meats,  of  California  fruits  and  of  other  goods  imported  from 
t.  ,  U”lted  States>  has  been  far  lower  than  we  have  been  paying 
right  here  where  the  goods  are  produced. 

Almost  Socialism. 

The  government  on  the  isthmus  has  not  been  exactly  So¬ 
cialism,  but  many  of  the  Socialist  principles  have  been  success¬ 
fully  applied.  It  would  take  only  a  few  minor  changes  to  make 
the  government  entirely  Socialistic.  The  private  corporation 
has  been  eliminated  and  business  has  been  run  to  promote  the 
pubhc  good  instead  of  for  private  profit.  If  the  officers  of 
the  district  who  are  managing  affairs  were  elected  by  the 
workers,  if  more  democracy  prevailed  in  the  administration  of 
the  government,  practically  everything  would  be  on  a  Socialist 
basis. 

Why  Not  Here? 

If  the  principles  of  Socialism  work  so  successfully  on  the 
Isthmus  of  Panama,  why  wouldn’t^  they  work  here?  The  Re¬ 
publicans,  Democrats,  Progressives  and  nonpartisans  have  done 
a  lot  of  talking  about  reducing  the  high  cost  of  living,  but  they 
do  nothing  that  will  actually  reduce  the  high  cost  of  living.  If 
these  parties  really  wanted  to  reduce  the  high  cost  of  living 
they  would  introduce  the  same  methods  of  doing  business  in 
the  United  States  that  are  now  working  successfully  in  Panama. 
The  extortional  profits  of  the  capitalists  would  then  be  elimi¬ 
nated.  _We  would  get  the  best  quality  of  goods  at  the  cost  of 
production  and  the  high  cost  of  living  would  be  settled  once 
for  all. 

There  is  only  one  party  in  the  United  States  which  stands 
for  this  solution  of  the  problem.  There  is  only  one  party  which 
stands  for  social  ownership  and  operation  of  industry  and  for 
the  workers  getting  the  full  product  of  their  toil.  All  other 
parties  dodge  this  issue  and  cry  out  “unconstitutional”  if  we 
attempt  to  do  for  the  people— or,  rather,  if  the  people  attempt 
to  do  for  themselves— what  is  already  being  done  on  the 
Isthmus  of  Panama.  But  we  are  making  progress.  Socialist 
agitation  has  compelled  the  old  parties  to  introduce  a  parcel 
post  system  and  to  provide  for  government  railroads  in  Alaska. 
Uncle  Sam  will  some  day  be  a  thorough  Socialist  and  justice 
and  industrial  democracy  will  prevail  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  United  States. 


307 


2.  The  Labor  Forces  Making  for  Socialism. 

(a)  REPORT  OF  COMMITTEE  ON  LABOR  ORGANIZA¬ 
TIONS  AND  THEIR  RELATION  TO  THE  PARTY. 

(Adopted  by  Socialist  National  Convention,  1912.) 

Political  organization  and  economic  organization  are  alike 
necessary  in  the  struggle  for  working  class  emancipation.  The 
most  harmonious  relations  ought  to  exist  between  the  two  great 
forces  of  the  working  class  movement — the  Socialist  party  and 
the  labor  unions. 

The  labor  movement  of  the  United  States  has  of  recent 
years  made  marvelous  progress  in  all  directions.  It  has  steadily 
increased  in  numbers  and  has  reached  trades  and  industries 
which  were  before  unorganized.  It  has  in  many  instances  con¬ 
centrated  its  power  and  increased  its  efficiency  by  the  amalgam¬ 
ation  of  related  trades  into  federations  and  industrial  unions. 
Many  unions  have  opened  their  meetings  and  journals  to  the 
discussion  of  vital  social  and  political  problems  of  the  working 
class,  and  have  repudiated  the  demoralizing  politics  represented 
by  the  National  Civic  Federation.  The  organized  workers  are 
rapidly  developing  an  enlightened  and  militant  class-conscious¬ 
ness. 

The  reality  of  this  progress  is  attested  by  the  increasing 
virulence  with  which  the  organized  capitalists  wage  their  war 
against  the  union.  This  improved  economic  organization  is  not 
a  matter  of  abstract  theory,  but  grows  out  of  the  experience  of 
the  wage  workers  in  the  daily  class  struggle.  Only  those  actu¬ 
ally  engaged  in  the  struggle  in  the  various  trades  and  industries 
can  solve  the  problems  of  form  of  organization. 

The  Socialist  party  therefore  reaffirms  the  position  it  has 
always  taken  with  regard  to  the  movement  of  organized  labor: 

1.  That  the  party  has  neither  the  right  nor  the  desire  to 
interfere  in  any  controversies  which  may  exist  within  the  labor 
union  movement  over  questions  of  form  of  organization  or 
technical  methods  of  action  in  the  industrial  struggle*,  but  trusts 
to  the  labor  organizations  themselves  to  solve  these  questions. 

2.  That  the  Socialists  call  the  attention  of  their  brothers 
in  the  labor  unions  to  the  vital  importance  of  the  task  of  organ¬ 
izing  the  unorganized,  especially  the  immigrants  and  the  un¬ 
skilled  laborers,  who  stand  in  greatest  need  of  organized  pro¬ 
tection  and  who  will  constitute  a  great  menace  to  the  progress 
and  welfare  of  organized  labor,  if  they  remain  neglected.  The 
Socialist  party  will  ever  be  ready  to  co-operate  with  the  labor 
unions  in  the  task  of  organizing  the  unorganized  workers,  and 
urges  all  labor  organizations  who  have  not  already  done  so  to 
throw  their  doors  wide  open  to  the  workers  of  their  respective 
trades  and  industries  abolishing  all  onerous  conditions  of  mem¬ 
bership  and  artificial  restrictions.  In  the  face  of  the  tremendous 
powers  of  the  American  capitalists  and  their  close  industrial 
and  political  union  the  workers  of  this  country  can  win  their 
battles  only  by  a  strong  class  consciousness  and  closely  united 
organizations  on  the  economic  field,  a  powerful  and  militant 
party  on  the  political  field  and  by  joint  attack  of  both  on  the 
common  enemy. 

3.  That  it  is  the  duty  of  the  party  to  give  moral  and  mate¬ 
rial  support  to  the  labor  organizations  in  all  their  defensive  or 
aggressive  struggles  against  capitalist  oppression  and  exploita¬ 
tion,  for  the  protection  and  extension  of  the  rights  of  the  wage 
workers  and  the  betterment  of  their  material  and  social  con¬ 
dition. 

4.  That  it  is  the  duty  of  the  members  of  the  Socialist  party 
who  are  eligible  to  membership  in  the  unions  to  join  and  be 
active  in  their  respective  labor  organizations. 


■ 


308 


(b)  LABOR  UNION  MEMBERSHIP  OF  THE  WORLD. 


Country. 
Argentine 
Australia 
Austria  . . . 
Belgium  . . 
Bohemia  . 
Bosnia  ... 
Bulgaria  . . 
Canada  . . . 
Denmark  . 
Finland  . . 


Membership. 

_  50,000 

, ...  360,000 

....  496,263 

_  92,735 

. . .  .  90,000 

.  ...  5,587 

.  .  . .  18,753 

.  ...  133,132 

. ...  128,224 

19,640 


France  .  1,029,238 

Germany  .  3,061,002' 

Great  Britain  .  3,010,346 


Membership. 

Holland  .  153,689 

Hungary  .  95,180 

Italy  .  709,941 

New  Zealand  .  60,000 

Norway  .  53,830 

Russia  .  650,000 

Servia  .  7,41S 

Spain  .  160,000 

Sweden  .  220,000 

Switzerland  .  93,797 

United  States  .  2,054,526 


Total  . 12,643,301 


3.  The  Co-operatives  and  Mutuals. 

(a)  STATISTICS  OF  DISTRIBUTIVE  SOCIETIES. 


(From  Year  Book  of  International  Co-operation,  page  138.) 
No.  of 


A — Europe. 

Austria  . 

Belgium  . 

Bulgaria . 

Denmark  . 

Finland  . 

France  . 

Germany  . 

Hungary  . 

Italy  . 

Netherlands 

Norway  . 

Roumania  . 

Russia  . 

Servia  . 

Spain  . 

Sweden  . 

Switzerland  .  . . 
United  Kingdom 
B — Asia. 

Japan  . . 

C — America. 

United  States  .  . 

Total  . 


Societies 

furnishing 

returns. 

No.  of 
Members. 

Yearly 

Turnover^. 

Working 

Capital. 

. ..  981 

379 

410,351 

250,106 

3  26,000,000 
11,640,000 

$  2,600,000 

800 

113,085 

102,000 

799,000 

1,473,740 

156,563 

346,000 

65,000 

15,541 

11,175,750 

13,750,000 

52,500,000 

103,176,250 

7,750,000 

512 

2  594 

.  ..  1*449 
992 

11,500,000 

1  764 

4,500,000 

4,592,500 

1,464,000 

5i 

. 

. 

182 

28,944 

66,582 

212,322 

2,542,532 

.  .  376 

328 

..  1,428 

6,294,250 

20,043,750 

359,307,000 

442,500 

1,900,000 

168,912,500' 

308 

24,000 

36,286 

163 

11,542,790 

4,260,000 

.  .12,307 

6,642,052 

$629,136,290 

$194,115,000 

(b)  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  WHOLESALE  CO-OPER¬ 
ATION  FROM  1901  TO  1910. 

(From  Year  Book  of  International  Co-operation,  pages  139  and 

151.) 

At  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  there  were  in 
existence  in  the  various  countries  of  Europe  ten  organizations, 
the  aim  of  which  was  the  joint  purchase  of  goods  on  behalf  of 
the  co-operative  distributive  societies.  The  oldest  of  these  or¬ 
ganizations  was  the  Co-operative  Wholesale  Society  in  Man¬ 
chester,  which  was  established  in  1863  and  which  began  opera¬ 
tions  in  the  spring  of  the  following  year.  Four  years  after  the 
foundation  of  the  Manchester  society,  the  Scottish  Co-operative 
Wholesale  Society  was  formed  in  Glasgow  on  similar  lines. 

For  more  than  a  decade  these  societies  were  the  only 
organizations  of  their  kind.  The  distributive  movement  on  the 
continent  was  not  yet  sufficiently  developed  to  warrant  the 
foundation  of  such  institutions.  During  the  sixties  and  seven¬ 
ties  efforts  were  made  in  Denmark,  Germany  and  Switzerland 
to  establish  wholesale  organizations;  these  efforts,  however,  did 
not  meet  with  success. 

Denmark  was  the  first  to  establish  a  wholesale  society,  this 
event  taking  place  in  1884;  in  1888  a  second  Danish  society  was 
formed.  These  two  societies  were  amalgamated  in  1896  under 
their  present  title,  Faellesforeningen  for  Danmarks  Brugsforen- 
ingers. 

Wholesale  societies  were  thereupon  established  as  follows: 

In  Switzerland,  1886;  Holland,  1889;  Germany,  1893;  Russia 


309 

and  Hungary,  1898;  Belgium,  1899;  France,  1901;  Sweden,  1904; 
Finland,  1904;  Austria,  1905;  Norway,  1906;  Italy,  1910. 

Bulgaria,  Portugal,  Roumania,  Servia  and  Spain  have  no 
wholesale  societies. 

In  California  there  is  a  small  co-operative  wholesale  society 
which  is,  however,  as  yet  only  in  its  infancy. 

It  is  interesting  to  learn  the  number  of  consumers  connected 
in  1910  with  the  wholesale  societies  in  all  those  countries  where 
these  organizations  exist.  In  the  absence  of  accurate  returns 
in  several  countries,  we  must  give  estimated  figures  in  this 
connection;  the  figures  in  the  following  table  will  not  be  very 

Members. 
2,000,000 
420,000 
1,000,000 
177,000 
225,000 
155,000 
50,000 
120,000 
200,000 
300,000 
148,000 
250,000 
70,000 
18,000 

5,143,00© 

We  may  safely  assert  that  co-operative  wholesale  purchase 
was  carried  on  in  1910  by  national  organizations  for  this  purpose 
on  behalf  of  at  least  5,000,000  consumers.  Great  Britain  alone 
was  responsible  for  nearly  half  this  number,  the  other  half 
being  continental  co-operators. 

The  total  trade  done  by  all  the  wholesales,  which  amounted 
in  1900  to  $125,000,000,  in  1910  reached  over  $225,000,000,  i.  e.,  it 
was  nearly  doubled  during  the  decade.  In  1911  the  total  ex¬ 
ceeded  $250,000,000. 

The  English  C.  W.  S.  contributed  the  largest  share  to  the 
magnificent  total;  this  society  alone  has  to  record  since  1900 
an  increase  in  the  amount  of  trade  done  of  nearly  $52,500,000 
(65  per  cent).  In  single  years  its  increase  has  varied  between  1.87 
per  cent  (1908)  and  8.87  per  cent  (1901)  ;  this  is  an  average  of 
about  5  per  cent  each  year.  These  figures  disclose  a  considerable 
increase  in  the  commercial  and  productive  activity  of  the  C. 
W.  S.,  with  regard  to  which  it  is  here  impossible  to  give  even 
superficial  particulars.  The  C.  W.  S.  has  made  more  progress 
in  the  period  of  1901-1910  than  in  that  from  1891  to  1900;  the 
increase  in  trade  done  for  the  latter  period  was  $43,000,000  and 
for  the  former,  as  we  have  already  mentioned,  $52,500,000.  Should 
this  organization  make  equal  progress  during  the  second  decade 
of  the  twentieth  century,  which  we  have  every  reason  to  expect, 
the  turnover  in  1920  will  be  about  $200,000,000.  There  is  an 
increase  of  $6,375,000,  or  4.83  per  cent,  to  record  for  1911. 

(c)  THE  CO-OPERATIVE  MOVEMENT  IN  THE  UNITED 

STATES. 

(From  Year  Book  of  International  Co-operation,  page  132.) 

The  co-operative  movement  in  the  United  States  is  still 
extraordinarily  weak  and  for  many  years  has  not  been  able  to 
obtain  a  firm  foothold.  During  the  last  few  years,  however, 
the  outlook  has  seemed  brighter;  it  has  been  very  very  difficult 
to  obtain  information  as  to  the  present  development  of  co-op¬ 
eration  in  North  America.  The  unions  at  present  existing  do 
not  compile  statistics  and  the  returns  with  regard  to  co-opera¬ 
tion  published  by  the  statistical  offices  are  very  incomplete. 

The  small  table,  which  we  are  able  to  give,  has  been  taken 
from  a  report  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor  and  Industrial  Statistics 
at  Wisconsin. 


Societies. 

England  . 

Scotland  . 

Germany  .  ® 

Switzerland  . 

Hungary  . 

Netherlands  . . 

Finland  . 

Russia  . • . 

France  . 

Belgium  . . J08 

Austria  . 

Sweden  . 

Norway  . ™ 

Total  .  7,033 


310 


Statistics  of  Distributive  Societies  in  the  United  States  of 
America,  1905. 

No.  of  Societies 
furnishing 

Number  of  societies  .  returns. 

Number  of  members  . 7! .  ico  oo* 

Share  capital  .  .  s  4  32J* 

No.  of  employes  . ..7.7.7.  160  ?  ’  l.’oo© 

4.  The  Socialist  Party  and  Its  Program. 

[For  statistics  on  the  vote  of  the  party  in  the  United  States 
and  the  world,  see  Part  I,  Section  3.] 

<a)  SOCIALIST  OFFICIALS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

1913. 

A  Partial  List. 

«ffl?l0te,TT5ev.fSllowin8:  llst  does  not  delude  those  whose  term  of 
office  expired  before  May,  1913.  We  have  not  included  any  officials 
whose  elections  we  have  not  been  able  to  fully  verify.  Newapaoer 
7  te[1  fround  erroneous  and  have  not  been  accepted 
as  sufficient  basis  for  including  elections  so  reported.  The  list 

VT'OK1iC0?Pletf’  bUt’  i?  far  as  #iven>  is  authoritative. 
LEWSLAIORS — Twenty-one  Members  in  Nine  States. 

STATE  SENATORS— 

Kansas  . *Fred  W.  Stanton,  Mulberry 

Nevada . M.  J.  Scanlan. 

Wisconsin  . Gabriel  Zophy,  West  Allis,  Milwaukee  County 

STATE  REPRESENTATIVES— 

. p-  Kingsiey,  Los  Angeles. 

Illinois  . tH-  _W.  Harris,  C.  M.  Madsen,  Joseph  M. 

T_.  „  Mason,  Seymour  Stedman,  all  of  Chicago 

Kansas  . Everett  Miller,  Scammon;  Benjamin  P  Wil- 

,,  son,  Girard. 

Massachusetts  . . .  Charles  H.  Morrill,  Haverhill 

Minnesota  . Nels  S.  Hillman,  Two  Harbors 

Montana  . Charles  H.  Connor,  Eureka. 

Nevada  . I.  P.  Davis,  To  no  pah. 

Washington  . W.  H.  Kingery,  Shelton. 

Wisconsin  . Martin  Gorecki,  E.  H.-  Kiefer,  Carl  Minkley 

William  L.  Smith,  J.  H.  Vint,  E.  H.  Zinn 
all  of  Milwaukee. 

*Reinoved  by  state  Senate  after  being  duly  elected  and  after 
having  been  so  declared  by  the  courts.  na  atter 

term^°S-  sea^  on  a  recount  after  having  served  most  of  the 

MAYORS — Thirty-four  Cities. 


Brainerd,  Minn.., 
Buena  Vista,  Colo. 
Burlington,  Wash 
Butte,  Mont. 
Crookston,  Minn.  . 
Eagle  Bend,  Minn. 
Eureka,  Utah.... 
Postoria,  Ohio.  .  . . 
Grand  Jet.,  Colo. . . 
Granite  City,  Ill.  . 

Gulfport,  Pla . 

Haledon,  N.  J.  .  .  . 
Hartford,  Ark 
Hendricks,  W.  Va. 
Hillyard,  Wash... 
Lafayette,  Colo... 
Liberal,  Mo . 


R.  A.  Henning. 
Homer  J.  Brown 
.Neil  Monroe 
.  Lewis  J.  Duncan 
H.  L.  Larson 
John  A.  Miller 
•A.  S.  Mitchell 
W.  M.  Ralston 
Thos.  M.  Todd 
M.  E.  Kirkpatrick 
E.  E.  Wlntersgill 
Wm.  Brueckmann 
Pete  Stewart 

R.  S.  Dayton 
Jared  Herdlich 

S.  R.  Wood 
M.  M.  Jones 


Mammoth,  Utah. 
Manitowoc,  Wis. 
Martins  P’ry,  O.  . 
Mineral  C’y,  O.  . . 
Min’l  Ridge,  O .  .  . 
Mt.  Vernon,  O. . 
Murray  C’y,  Utah 
New  Castle, Pa. . . 
Rockaway,  N.  J .  . 

Rugby,  N.  D . 

Schenect’y,  N.  Y. 
Sisseton,  S.  D.  . .  . 
Star  City,  W.  Va. 

St.  Mary’s,  O . 

Talent,  O . 

Toronto,  0....7 
Two  Harbors, 
Minn . 


•  N.  J.  Hansen 
.Henry  Stolze,  Jr. 
.Newton  Wycoff 
.L.  S.  McKinney 
.Ed.  E.  Robinson 
.  A.  A.  Perrine 
.Geo.  A.  Huscher 

•  Walter  V.  Tyler 
W.  A.  Matthew* 
•E.  S.  Dale 

.  Geo.  R.  Lunn 
J ohn  iC.  Knapp 

•  Wm.  Shay 

•  Scott  Wilkins 

•  Wm.  H.  Breese 

.  Robt.  J.  Murray 
Wm.  Towl. 

•  A.  A.  Perrine 


Th,r^  (inciua,n* 4  co-mw™,- 

Number  of  cities  having  one  Socialist  alderman,  45. 

Number  of  cities  having  two  Socialist  alderman,  26 
Number  of  cities  having  three  Socialist  aldermen,  10 
Number  pf  cities  having  four  or  more  Socialist  aldermen  17* 
nf^neI.a’r-M  ?"■’  ,4:  ®utte’  8;  Collinsville,  Oklf  4?  Burak* 

Utah,  4,  Gulfport,  Pla.,  4;  Grant’s  Pass.,  Ore.,  4;  Hamilton  Ohio’ 
fi  •TTvndr^5ksA  Martin’s  Ferry,  Ohio,  7;  Milwaukee  Wi*  ' 

V9rv>e.WnMSt  c’  Pa..,  9;  Reading,  Pa.,  4;  Schenectady,  N  Y  ’  8 •  St’ 
Hartor,,  Mlnn  /e  y’  ”  6:  Thlef  Rlver  Fa,ls-  Minn.,  6;  Two 

OTHER  MUNICIPAL  OFFICES— One  Hundred  and  Six  a* 

t..At^rneys’  2:  treas”rers,  14;  comptroller I  1?  auditors  8?  trTs 
tees.  19;  assessors,  28;  supervisors,  6;  minor  offices  28  ’  ’  trUS 

COUNTY  OFFICES-One  Hundred  and  Fifty,  as  follows: 


311 


Justices  of  peace,  55;  constables,  42;  treasurers,  5;  attorney, 
1;  state’s  attorney,  1;  sheriffs,  3;  minor  offices,  43. 

SCHOOL,  OFFICES — One  Hundred  and  Twenty-six,  as  follows: 

Trustees,  54;  directors,  58;  superintendents,  2;  members  of 
boards  of  education,  7;  others,  5. 

Total  number  of  Socialists  holding-  office  In  America  at  this 
date — May,  1913 — officially  reported  to  the  Information  Hepart- 
ment.  667. 

Socialists  Entitled  to  Twenty-six  Members  of  Congress. 

W.  J.  Ghent  has  submitted  the  follownig  figures,  showing 
how  the  United  States  Congress  would  be  made  up  if  the 
members  \vere  elected  by  proportional  representation. 


Party. 

Vote. 

Representation. 
Earned.  Actual. 

Democrats  . 

. . .  6,297,150 

182 

290 

Progressives  . 

.  4,125,886 

119 

16 

Republicans  . 

.  3,485,039 

101 

127 

Socialists  . 

. . .  901,062 

26 

0 

Prohibition  . 

.  209,500 

6 

0 

Socialist-Labor  . 

.  30,344 

1 

0 

Scattered  . 

.  3,526 

0 

0 

Total  . 

. 15,052,507 

435 

433 

1  Independent,  1  vacancy  in  April,  1913. 

(b)  SOCIALIST  MUNICIPAL  PROGRAM. 

The  following  outlined  program  for  the  work  of  the  Socialist 
party  in  the  realm  of  municipal  activities  is  the  work  of  a  com¬ 
mittee  appointed  by  the  National  Party  Convention  at  Indian¬ 
apolis,  May  12-18,  1912,  and  was  adopted  by  the  convention. 
Similar  committees  and  national  conventions  had  worked  along 
similar  lines  before  and  this  report  may  be  accepted  as  the  lines 
quite  generally  agreed  upon  by  the  Socialist  party. 

The  committee  was  this  time  made  permanent  and  instructed 
to  continue  the  study  of  these  problems  and  be  prepared  to 
submit  further  suggestions  and  recommendations  at  the  next 
national  convention. 

Especial  mention  should  also  be  made  of  the  proposal  to 
have  the  Party’s  National  Executive  Committee  establish  a 
permanent  Bureau  of  Information  for  the  collection  of  material 
necessary  for  the  work  of  the  Socialists  elected  to  legislative 
bodies,  both  municipal  and  state,  and  national.  The  bureau  is 
to  be  put  in  charge  of  a  capable  secretary  with  special  training 
and  fitness  for  this  particular  line  of  work. 

PREAMBLE. 

“Socialism  cannot  be  carried  into  full  effect  while  the  So¬ 
cialist  Party  is  a  minority  party.  Nor  can  it  be  inaugurated  in 
any  single  city.  Furthermore,  so  long  as  national  and  state 
legislatures  and  particularly  the  courts  are  in  control  of  the 
capitalist  class,,  a  municipal  administration,  even  though  abso¬ 
lutely  controlled  by  Socialists,  will  be  hampered,  crippled  and 
restricted  in  every  way  possible. 

“We  maintain  that  the  evils  of  the  present  system  will  be  re¬ 
moved  only  when  the  working  class  wholly  abolish  private 
ownership  in  the  social  means  of  production,  collectively  as¬ 
sume  the  management  of  the  industries  and  operate  them  for 
use  and  not  for  profit,  for  the  benefit  of  all  and  not  for  the  en¬ 
richment  of  a  privileged  class.  In  this  the  Socialist  Party  stands 
alone  in  the  political  field. 

“But  the  Socialist  Party  also  believes  that  the  evils  of  the 
modern  system  may  be  materially  relieved  and  their  final  dis¬ 
appearance  may  be  hastened  by  the  introduction  of  social,  po¬ 
litical  and  economic  measures  which  have  the  effect  of  better¬ 
ing  the  lives,  strengthening  the  position  of  the  workers  and 
curbing  the  power  and  domination  of  the  capitalists. 

“The  Socialist  Party  therefore  supports  the  struggles  of  the 
working  class  against  the  exploitation  and  oppression  of  the 
capitalist  class,  and  is  vitally  concerned  in  the  efficiency  of  the 


312 


parliamentary  and  administrative  means  for  the  fighting  of  the 
class  struggle.” 

Furthermore,  it  should  be  distinctly  understood  that  the 
following  suggested  municipal  and  state  program  is  not  put 
forth  as  mandatory  or  binding  upon  the  state  or  local  organi¬ 
zations.  It  is  offered  as  suggestive  data  to  assist  those  locali¬ 
ties  that  may  desire  to  use  it,  and  as  a  basis  for  the  activities 
of  Socialist  members  of  state  legislatures  and  local  adminis¬ 
trations. 


LABOR  MEASURES. 

(1)  Eight  hour  day,  trade  union  wages  and  conditions  in  all 
public  employment  and  on  all  contract  work  done  for  the  city. 
.  p®nsio£.  accident  insurance  and  sick  benefits  to 

be  provided  for  all  public  employes. 

m»«s™  SPecial  laws  for  the  protection  of  both  men,  women  and 
children,  in  mercantile,  domestic  and  industrial  pursuits. 

(4)  Abolition  of  child  labor. 

(5)  Police  not  to  be  used  to  break  strikes. 

(6)  Rigid  inspection  of  factories  by  local  authorities  for  the 
improvement  of  sanitary  conditions,  lighting,  ventilating,  heat- 
inS  the  !lke*  Safety  appliances  required  in  all  cases  to  pro¬ 
tect  the  worker  against  dangerous  machinery. 

(7)  Free  employment  bureaus  to  be  established  in  the  cities 
to  work  in  co-operation  with  state  bureaus.  Abolition  of  con- 
work  *yst€m  and  direct  employment  by  the  city  on  all  public 

(8)  Free  legal  advice.  • 

.  ,T£e  Provision  of  work  for  the  unemployed  by  the  erection 
of  model  dwellings  for  workingmen;  the  paving  and  Improvement 
of  streets  and  alleys,  and  the  extension  and  improvement  of 
parks  and  playgrounds. 

II. 

HOME  RULE. 

(1)  Home  rule  or  cities;  including  the  right  of  the  city  to 
own  and  operate  any  and  all  public  utilities;  to  engage  in  com¬ 
mercial  enterprises  of  any  and  all  kinds;  the  right  of  excess 
condemnation,  both  within  and  outside  the  city,  and  the  right 
of  two  or  more  cities  to  co-operate  in  the  ownership  and  man¬ 
agement  of  public  utilities;  the  city  to  have  the  right  of  Issuing 
bonds  for  these  purposes  up  to  50%  of  the  assessed  valuation, 
or  the  right  to  issue  mortgage  certificates  against  the  property 
acquired,  said  certificates  not  to  count  against  the  bonded  in¬ 
debtedness  of  the  city. 

III. 

MUNICIPAL  OWNERSHIP. 

(1)  The  city  to  acquire  as  rapidly  as  possible,  own  and  oper¬ 
ate  its  public  utilities,  especially  street  car  systems,  light,  heat 
and  power  plants,  docks,  wharves,  etc. 

Among  the  things  which  may  be  owned  and  operated  by  the 
city  to  advantage  are  slaughter  houses,  bakeries,  milk  depots 
coal  and  wood  yards,  ice  plants,  undertaking  establishments  and 
crematories. 

On  all  public  works,  eight  hour  day,  trade  union  wages  and 
progressive  Improvement  in  the  condition  of  labor  to  be  estab¬ 
lished  and  maintained. 

IV. 

CITY  PLATTING,  PLANNING  AND  HOUSING. 

(1)  The  introduction  of  scientific  city  planning  to  provide  for 
the  development  of  cities  along  the  most  sanitary,  economic  and 
attractive  lines. 

(2)  The  city  to  secure  the  ownership  of  land,  to  plat  the  same 
so  as  to  provide  for  plenty  of  open  space  and  to  erect  model  dwell¬ 
ings  thereon  to  be  rented  by  the  municipality  at  cost. 

(3)  Transportation  facilities  to  be  maintained  with  special 
reference  to  the  prevention  of  overcrowding  in  unsanitary  tene¬ 
ments  and  the  creation  of  slum  districts. 

V. 

PUBLIC  HEALTH. 

(1)  Inspection  of  food. 

(2)  Sanitary  Inspection. 

(3)  Extension  of  hospital  and  free  medical  treatment. 

(4)  Child  welfare  department,  to  combat  death  rate  prevail¬ 
ing,  especially  in  working  class  sections. 

(5)  Special  attention  to  eradioation  of  tuberculosis  and  other 
contagious  diseases. 

(6)  System  of  street  toilets  and  public  comfort  stations. 

(7)  Adequate  system  of  public  baths,  parks,  playgrounds  and 
gymnasiums. 

VI. 

PUBLIC  EDUCATION. 

(1)  Adequate  number  of  teachers  »o  that  classes  may  not 
be  too  large. 


31S 


(2) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 

(6) 


Retirement  fund  for  teachers. 

Adequate  school  buildings  to  be  provided  and  maintained. 
Ample  playgrounds  with  instructors  in  charge. 

Free  text  books  and  equipment. 

Penny  lunches,  and  where  necessary,  free  meals  and 

Cl<>t(7)nSMedical  inspection,  including  free  service  in  the  care  of 
eyes,  ears,  throat,  teeth  and  general  health  where  necessary  to 
insure  mental  efficiency  in  the  educational  work,  and  special  in¬ 
spection  to  protect  the  schools  from  contagion. 

(8)  Baths  and  gymnasiums  in  each  school. 

(9)  Establishment  of  vacation  schools  and  adequate  nigh? 
schools  for  adults. 

(10)  All  school  buildings  to  be  open  or  available  for  the  citi¬ 
zens  of  their  respective  communities,  at  any  and  all  times  and 
for  any  purpose  desired  by  the  citizens,  so  long  as  such  use 
does  not  interfere  with  the  regular  school  work.  All  schools  to 
serve  as  centers  for  social,  civic  and  recreational  purposes. 


VII. 

THE  LIQUOR  TRAFFIC  AND  VICE. 

(1)  Socialization  of  the  liquor  traffic;  the  city  to  offer  a, 
substitute  for  the  social  features  of  the  saloon,  opportunities  for 
recreation  and  amusement,  under  wholesome  conditions. 

(2)  Abolition  of  the  restricted  vice  districts. 


VIII. 

MUNICIPAL  MARKETS. 


Municipal  markets  to  be  established  where  it  is  found  that  by 
this  means  a  reduction  may  be  secured  in  the  cost  of  the  neces¬ 
sities  of  life. 


What  the  Social-Democratic  Administration  in  Milwaukee  Did 
for  Organized  Labor  and  the  Working  Class. 

The  following  is  a  partial  list  of  the  labor  measures  intro¬ 
duced  or  "put  into  operation  by  the  Milwaukee  Socialist  admin¬ 
istration: 

I.  Raised  the  wages  of  all  the  city  laborers  from  $1.75  per 
dav  to  $2  per  dav,  and  thus  fixed  the  minimum  scale. 

"2.  Established  the  trade  union  scale  of  wages  for  all  skilled 
employes  of  the  city. 

3.  Established  the  eight-hour  workday  by  ordinance  for  all 
public  employes,  whether  working  for  the  city  or  by  contractors 
employed  by  the  city. 

4.  Union  labor  employed  exclusively  in  all  departments 
wherever  mechanics  are  employed. 

5.  Raised  the  wages  of  132  employes  on  the  Sixteenth  Street 
viaduct  to  the  union  scale. 

6  Helped  to  settle  the  garment  workers’  strike. 

7.  Secured  the  union  label  on  every  piece  of  public  printing. 

8.  Passed  an  engineers’  license  ordinance,  for  which  the  engi¬ 
neers’  union  had  been  fighting  for  twenty  years.  This  ordinance 
forces  every  engineer  to  pass  an  examination,  thereby  elevating 
the  conditions  of  the  engineer  and  protecting  the  lives  of  thou¬ 
sands  of  working  men  and  women  against  careless  and  incom¬ 
petent  workmen. 

9.  Passed  an  ordinance  licensing  every  elevator  operator  In 
the  city.  This  ordinance  forces  every  operator  to  pass  an  exami¬ 
nation,  thereby  elevating  the  conditions  of  the  operator  and  pro¬ 
tecting  the  lives  of  thousands  of  patrons  of  elevators  every  day 
against  careless  and  incompetent  workmen. 

10.  Under  the  county  administration  the  Grand  Avenue  via¬ 
duct  was  built  by  union  labor. 

II.  Through  the  influence  of  the  Socialist  members  of  the 
County  Board  of  Supervisors  the  new  County  Agricultural  School 
will  be  built  by  union  labor  in  its  entirety. 

12.  Through  the  influence  of  the  City  Purchasing  Department 
the  H.  H.  West  and  Siekert  &  Baum  printing  and  bindery  estab¬ 
lishments  were  organized. 

13.  All  horseshoeing  done  only  in  union  shops  by  order  of  the 
Department  of  Public  Works. 

14.  Secured  an  addition  of  two  days  “offs”  for  the  policemen 
each  month. 

15.  The  new  police  and  fire  alarm  posts  are  now  being  cast  in 
a  union  shop  and  will  bear  the  label  of  the  Molders’  International 
Union.  And,  incidentally,  the  posts  cost  $10  apiece  less  than  the 
next  lowest  bid  of  a  non-union  shop — thus  saving  the  taxpayer* 
$3,000  on  the  500  posts  and  giving  us  the  union  label  besides. 

16.  Wherever  possible,  this  administration  has  done  the  work 
of  repair,  remodeling  and  building  by  direct  employment,  employ¬ 
ing  union  labor. 

17.  All  sprinkling  wagons  are  now  repaired  and  painted  di¬ 
rectly  by  the  city  by  union  labor,  and  for  the  first  time  in  the 
history  of  the  city  they  bear  the  union  label. 

18.  All  street  refuse  cans  bear  the  label  of  the  Sheet  Metal 
Workers’  and  Painters’  International  Unions. 

19.  Every  bridgetender  in  the  city,  numbering  eighty-eight, 
organized,  and  where  they  formerly  worked  72  hours  to  a  shift, 
the  majority  are  now  employed  on  a  twelve-hour  shift,  and  all 


814 


will  be  placed  on  a  twelve-hour  shift  as  soon  as  possible  An 
attempt  was  made  to  increase  the  wages,  but  this  was  defeated 
minority,  Republicans  and  Democrats  to  a  man  voting  to 
kiil  the  increase.  By  a  parliamentary  trick  they  succeeded  in 
crease  the  matter  over  for  two  weeks»  thereby  defeating  the  in- 

2°  Every  fireman,  engineer,  oiler,  coal  passer  .and  helper  in 
the  city  and  county  buildings  now  belongs  to  his  respective  union 
Every  man  is  now  carrying  a  union  card.  And,  besides,  the  men 
now  have  one  day  off  in  seven,  something  never  before  enjoyed 
as  they  formerly  worked  seven  days  per  week 

21  The  C.  F.  Comway  Company  of  Chicago  bid  on  the  asphalt 
street  paving  and  was  the  successful  bidder,  but  the  administra¬ 
tion  was  informed  that  this  firm  was  fighting  union  labor  in 
Chicago  for  the  past  three  years.  The  administration  succeeded 
in  persuading  this  firm  to  yield  to  union  demands  and  organized 
its  men,  not  only  in  Milwaukee,  but  also  in  Chicago,  thereby  ma¬ 
terially  assisting  the  engineers  and  other  trades  in  the  street 
paving  industry. 

22.  All  elevator  operators  working  for  the  city  and  county 
have  been  organized  into  a  union  known  as  Elevator  Operators' 
Union  No.  13803  and  affiliated  with  the  Federated  Trades  Council 
and  the  American  Federation  of  Labor. 

23  The  elevator  inspectors  were  Induced  to  join  the  union  of 
the  elevator  constructors  of  Milwaukee. 

24.  Garbage  and  ash  collectors  have  been  organized  through 
the  assistance  of  the  administration. 

25.  This  administration  inaugurated  a  thorough  and  syste¬ 
matic  factory  inspection  to  insure  steady  Improvement  of  sanitarv 
conditions  of  labor. 

26.  Established  a  child  welfare  department  to  help  in  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  childhood  through  the  teaching  and  assistance  of  mothers 
Reports  printed  in  all  papers. 

27.  Established  a  tuberculosis  commission  to  help  the  people 
in  the  fight  against  that  dread  disease. 


What  Socialists  Have  Done  in  Municipalities. 

(National  Office  Leaflet  by  Carl  D.  Thompson). 

Socialism  is  no  longer  a  mere  theory  in  this  country. 

It  has  been  put  to  the  test. 

There  are  today  (September,  1913)  Socialist  mayors  in  no 
less  than  34  cities  in  the  United  States;  more  than  250  Socialist 
aldermen;  106  other  municipal  officers,  including  attorneys, 
treasurers,  comptrollers,  auditors,  trustees,  assessors,  etc. 

In  none  of  these  cities  have  the  Socialists  been  in  complete 
control.  Everywhere  they  have  been  hampered,  restricted  and 
obstructed  by  minorities,  by  state  laws,  by  court  injunctions. 
Ye-t  they  have  made  a  record.  And  it  is  a  remarkable  record. 

If  you  have  read  nothing  but  the  capitalist  newspapers,  you 
have  been  told  that  these  Socialist  administrations  are  a  dismal 
failure. 

But  you  want  the  facts.  And  the  facts  are  quite  different. 
They  are  written  in  the  official  records  of  the  cities  where  the 
Socialists  have  been  in  office.  There  they  are,  black  on  white. 
No  dodging  them.  No  denying  them. 

And  we  propose  to  give  you  a  few  of  these  facts — just  a 
few  of  the  more  important  ones.  We  give  you  the  facts,  and 
you  can  judge  for  yourself  whether  the  Socialists  have  made 
good. 

1.  First  Fact.  The  Socialists  Have  Given  the  Cities  Abso¬ 
lutely  Honest  Administrations. — Whatever  else  has  been  said 

against  the  Socialists  and  Socialist  administrations,  everybody 
admits  that  they  have  been  honest.  No  graft,  no  boodle,  no 
thievery — absolutely  honest. 

That  means  a  great  deal  in  this  country,  where  every  city 
government  is  a  cesspool  of  political  corruption.  Shortly  be¬ 
fore  the  Socialists  went  into  office  in  Milwaukee,  there  were 
254  indictments  against  Republican  and  Democratic  officials  for 
grafting,  bribery,  horse-stealing  and  petty  larceny.  And  there 
were  23  convictions.  There  has  not  been  a  single  case  of  that 
sort  against  the  Socialists. 

The  Socialists  put  the  grafter  out  of  business.  In  Butte 
they  made  the  city  treasurer  turn  over  $6,000  of  interest  on 
city  deposits  which  had  formerly  gone  into  the  treasurer’s 
pocket.  In  Schenectady  they  knocked  the  graft  out  of  the 


315 


street  paving  business,  and  reduced  the  cost  to  the  city  from 
$2.16  per  square  yard  to  $1.15.  In  Milwaukee  they  did  the 
same  trick  and  saved  the  city  over  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars 
on  this  item  alone. 

And  so  everywhere  the  Socialists  have  given  the  cities  honest  . 

administrations.  .  . 

That  is  what  you  want  in  your  city — an  honest  administra¬ 
tion.  You  get  it  from  the  Socialists.  You  don’t  get  it  from 
anywhere  else.  Neither  the  Republican  nor  the  Democratic 
party  has  given  American  cities  honest  administrations.  They 
have  been  on  th<e  job  for  fifty  years,  both  of  them,  and  matters 
have  grown  steadily  worse  all  the  time.  Neither  will  a  com¬ 
bination  of  the  corrupt  elements  in  both  old  parties  give  you 
an  honest  administration— not  even  if  they  drop  their  old  names 
and  call  themselves  Non-Partisans,  or  Citizens. 

So  that  is  one  thing  that  everybody  has  to  give  the  Socialists 
credit  for.  But,  after  all,  that  is  the  very  least  of  what  the 
*  Socialists  themselves  expect.  Honesty,  however  important,  is 
not  enough.  They  must  be  efficient,  they  must  be  able  to  handle 
the  problems.  Have  the  Socialists  been  efficient? 

2.  Second  Fact.  The  Socialists  Have  Given  the  Cities  Ef¬ 
ficient  Administrations. — In  the  matter  of  business  methods, 
the  Socialists  were  the  first  to  officially  introduce  modern,  up- 
to-date  office  and  business  methods  in  municipal  affairs.  The 
Socialists  hadn’t  been  in  office  a  single  hour  in  Milwaukee  before 
they  re-organized  the  department  of  public  works,  they  intro¬ 
duced  a  scientific  budget  and  inventory  of  the  city’s  property, 
and  a  method  of  accounting  for  every  item  of  property  m  the 
different  departments.  The  purchasing  department  established 
by  the  Socialists  saved  30  per  cent  on  the  city’s  purchases  in 
Schenectady  and  $40,000  in  Milwaukee  in  a  single  year. 

These  are  simply  business  methods — efficiency  and  economy. 

And  that’s  what  you  want.  -  . 

Moreover,  the  Socialists  have  fully  demonstrated  their  ability 
to  handle  the  other  problems  of  the  city.  They  paved  more 
streets,  cleaned  up  more  alleys,  built  more  school  houses,  col¬ 
lected  more  taxes  from  the  tax-dodgers,  exacted  more  service 
from  the  private  street  car  companies,  gas  light  and  power 
monopolies  than  the  other  parties  ever  tried  to  do. 
i  These  are  all  matters  of  public  record — black  on  white,  it 
you  have  any  doubts  or  want  any  details  and  facts,  our  Infor¬ 
mation  Department  in  the  National  Office  will  gladly  supply  you. 

3  Third  Fact.  The  Socialists  Greatly  Improved  Labor 
Conditions  in  Their ’  Cities.— In  O’Fallon,  Ill.,  they  raised  the 
wages  of  the  city  employes  more  than  15  per  cent.  In  Mil¬ 
waukee  they  raised  the  wages  of  580  of  the  common  laborers 
from  $1.75  to  $2.00  per  day.  In  Schenectady  they  did  even  bet¬ 
ter,  raising  the  wages  to  $2.25.  In  Naugatuck,  Connecticut,  they 
established  the  eight-hour  day.  This  was  done  in  practically 
every  city  where  the  Socialists  had  any  considerable  number 
of  representatives.  Everywhere  the  Socialists  demand  the  union 
label  on  all  city  printing,  and  insist  on  union-made  goods,  in 
Milwaukee  they  raised  the  wages  of  library  and  museum  em¬ 
ployes;  settled  the  garment  workers’  strike  peacefully  and  to 
the  advantage  of  the  workers.  Mayor  Seidel  ordered  the  chief 
of  police  not  to  interfere  with  the  rights  of  the  working  girls, 
and  Socialist  City  Attorney  Hoan  refused  to  prosecute  the 
strikers  on  false  and  illegal  grounds.  So  they  won 

In  St.  Mary’s,  Ohio,  the  Socialists  reduced  the  hours  from 
twelve  to  eight;,  raised  the  firemen’s  wages  from  $50  to  $60 
per  month,  and  other  municipal  employees  Pr°P°rtlo£at|ly\  . 

In  Haverhill,  Massachusetts,  as  far  back  as  1898,  the  Social¬ 
ists  introduced  the  principle  of  direct  employment  of  labor  by 
the  city  on  all'  public  work,  as  far  as  possible.  This  extends  all 


th?  J\e.nffits  ?f  b^tter  labor  conditions  to  more  of  the  workers— 

“:n^ei8ht-hOUr  day  “d  raiS«  **  —  to  ^ 

Schenectady  Socialists  raised  the  wages  of  the  teachers  In 
Milwaukee  they  secured  extra  “offs”  for  the  police,  arranged  to 
allow  the  unemployed  and  homeless  to  sleep  in  the  parks  and 

f°V0  8et  the  dty  to  buy  land  build 
homes  to  be  rented  to  the  workers  at  cost.  And  perhaps  most 

important  of  all,  a  rigid  factory  inspection  was  inaugurated 
by.  the,.bealth  department.  Factory  inspection  by  Socialists  is 
quite  different  from  just  ordinary  factory  inspection  The  So¬ 
cialists  inspection  got  results  right  off.  Inside  of  a  few  months, 
55  improved  ventilation  systems  were  installed  to  supply  fresh 
air  to  the  workers  while  at  their  tasks  in  the  working  plac„. 
Eighteen  suction  hoods  to  draw  away  gas,  smoke  and  acid 
fumes,  were  put.  in  operation.  Fifty-four  new  toilets  installed 

;  r!P?!rCi;,3^  PnVy  VaultS  abolished;  65  emery  wheels  were  pro- 
tected,  oO  bakeries  were  changed  and  improvements  effected  in 
153  sweatshops. 

Everywhere  swift  and  aggressive  action  in  improving  labor 
conditions. 

Fourth  Fact.  The  Socialists  Improved  the  Public  Health 
ot  the  Cities.  To  this  the  Socialists  always  give  special  at¬ 
tention  The  results  in  a  single  city  are  as  follows:  Four 
hundred  and  eight  fewer  cases  of  scarlet  fever  the  first  year* 
324  fewer  cases  of  diphtheria;  1,044  of  typhoid,  1,293  of  measles! 
151  of  tuberculosis,  etc.;  rigid  inspection  of  foods  inaugurated* 
smoke  abatement  pressed;  a  new  isolation  hospital  opened*  a 
child  welfare  department,  and  a  special  anti-tuberculosis  cam¬ 
paign  inaugurated. 

.  Fifth  Fact.  The  Socialists  Improved  the  Financial  Condi¬ 
tion  of  the  Cities.— It  is  often  claimed  that  Socialists  would 
bankrupt  a  city  and  ruin  its  credit.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
records  show  that  without  exception  the  financial  conditions 
of  the  cities  were  never  so  good  as  while  the  Socialists  were  in 
power.  The  bonds  of  the  city  of  Milwaukee  sold  at  several 
points  better  under  the  Socialists  than  ever  before. 

In  Butte  the  Socialists  found  the  city  about  $1,000,000  in 
debt,  and  put  it  on  a  sound  basis;  in  Milwaukee  they  found  the 
city  with  a  $216,000  deficit  and  left  it  with  a  substantial  surplus. 
In  Berkeley  the  surplus  was  $48,000  more  at  the  end  of  the  first 
term  than  when  the  Socialists  took  hold. 

Moreover,  the  Socialists  make  the  corporations  pay  their 
taxes.  In  Schenectady  they  boosted  the  assessments  of  the  big 
fellows  $3,600,000;  in  Anaconda  the  Socialist  assessor  raised  the 
assessment  of  the  Amalgamted  Copper  Company  from  six 
millions  to  sixteen  millions  and  doubled  the  assessments  on  the 
railroads. 


Sixth  Fact.  The  Socialists  Exacted  the  Best  Possible  Service 
from  the  Public  Service  Corporation.  —  Haverhill  Socialists 
forced  the  gas  company  to  reduce  the  price  of  gas  from  $1.40  per 
thousand  feet  to  80  cents.  They  also  started  the  fight  that  com¬ 
pelled  the  railways  to  elevate  their  tracks.  In  St.  Mary’s  they 
readjusted  the  water  rates  and  reduced  the  electric  light  rates 
from  9  cents  per  k.  w.  to  7  cents.  The  Milwaukee  Socialists 
compelled  the  street  car  company  to  sprinkle  the  streets,  to 
pave,  and  repair  them  between  their  tracks,  forced  a  cross-town 
service,  compelled  the  company  to  install  air  brakes  and  lifting 
jacks.  They  forced  the  reduction  of  the  charges  for  electricity, 
compelled  the  steam  railroads  to  do  their  share  of  street  pav¬ 
ing,  and  carried  through  the  fight  for  track  elevation  and  de¬ 
pression. 

In  contrast  to  the  old  party  administrations  that  barter 
away  the  people’s  rights  in  wanton  franchise  grants,  the  Social- 


317 


ists  have  carefully  protected  every  right  of  the  people,  and  es¬ 
pecially  of  labor,  in  their  franchises,  providing  ultimately  for 
municipal  ownership. 

Seventh  Fact.  The  Socialists  Developed  Public  Education.— 
They  built  five  new  modern,  up-to-date  school  houses  in  Sche¬ 
nectady,  raised  the  wages  of  the  teachers,  furnished  free  text¬ 
books  and  school  supplies,  established  a  dental  clinic. 

In  Milwaukee  the  Socialists  drew  upon  the  state  university 
and  a  staff  of  specialists  and  experts  from  other  states,  to  con¬ 
duct  a  bureau  of  efficiency  and  economy  for  the  city;  installed 
a  university  extension  department  in  the  city  hall;  published 
numerous  educational  bulletins  on  health  and  other  subjects 
of  public  interest;  conducted  lectures  on  civic  and  social  mat¬ 
ters  in  the  council  chamber  of  the  city  hall,  and  finally  con¬ 
ducted  a  whole  week’s  budget  exhibit  of  exposition  for  the  edu¬ 
cation  of  the  people  in  the  work  of  the  city.  In  Naugatuck, 
Conn.,  the  Socialists  raised  wages  of  both  teachers  and  school 
employees  and  started  a  campaign  for  teacher’s  pensions. 

Eighth  Fact.  The  Socialists  Developed  Public  Recreation 
and  Amusement  Facilities. — The  public  school  buildings  have 
been  opened  and  made  social  and  civic  -centers  for  lectures, 
clubs,  reading  rooms,  socials  and  dances.  Band  concerts  are 
conducted  in  the  parks  in  summer  and  indoor  concerts  in  win¬ 
ter-all  free  or  with  a  nominal  charge.  Parks  and  playgrounds 
have  been  increased,  public  baths  and  recreation  centers  de¬ 
veloped.  Milwaukee  conducted  municipal  dances,  and  an  old- 
time  beer  garden  was  purchased  by  the  city  and  turned  into  a 
public  park  with  a  children’s  playground.  A  branch  of  the 
public  library  was  added,  and  today  the  books  of  child  story 
and  song  are  passed  out  over  the  bar  where  formerly  the  beer 

was  handed  out.  .  .. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  actual  achievements  of  the  Socialists 

in  the  cities  where  they  have  been  in  office. 

What  Schenectady,  or  Butte,  or  Berkeley,  or  Milwaukee  can 

do,  any  other  city  can  do.  ...  .  ..  , 

And  if  through  the  work  of  Socialists  in  the  city  council  the 
price  of  water  and  gas  and  electricity  is  reduced,  by  the  same 
means  you  may  reduce  the  price  of  bread  and  coal  and  rent 
and  all  the  other  necessities  now  sold  at  monopoly  prices  by 
the  trusts.  That  will  help  solve  the  high. cost  of  living. 

And  if  through  the  work  of  a  few  Socialists  in  a  city  council 
you  can  raise  wages,  shorten  hours  and  improve  conditions  of 
labor,  by  the  same  means  you  can  force  the  fight  into  state 
and  national  matters  and  solve  the  labor  problem. 

Beat  the  monopoly  and  the  trust  in  the  city  now,  and  by 
and  by  you  can  beat  them  in  the  state  and  the  nation. 

Help  the  Socialists  to  give  the  city  an  honest  and  efficient 
administration,  and  by-and-by  you  will  have  an  honest  adminis¬ 
tration  in  the  state  and  nation.  , 

Thus  Socialism  offers  the  people- of  the  city  the  only  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  work  and  to  fight  for  a  real  solution  of  the  problems 
that  torment  the  people. 

Commendations  by  Non-Socialists. 

Telegram  sent  from  the  Milwaukee  Evening  Wisconsin  to 
the  Berkeley  (Cal.)  Gazette,  and  published  there. 

“Milwaukee,  March  29.— (Special  to  the  Gazette)— Milwau¬ 
kee  has  an  honest  administration.  This,  in  brief,  'Sums  ^p  the 
political  situation  in  Milwaukee  city  and  county  under  Socialists 
regime.  Whatever  criticism  may  be  directed  at  the  administra¬ 
tion,  the  impartial  ones  concede  that  its  officials  are  honest  and 

conscientious.  .. 

“During  the  last  year  the  Socialists  have  directed  many  public 
improvements,  weeded  out  inefficient  city  employes  and  raised 


318 


the  salaries  of  those  who  are  competent.  The  passing-  of  a 
resolution  by  the  common  council  to  purchase  a  million  dollar 
park  along  the  river  has  brought  forth  criticism,  but  business 

iTvalue'^Ther111  thiS  pr°perty  wil1  hav^  doubled 

f  anJ  a  Present  between  12,000  and  15,000  un¬ 
employed  in  Milwaukee,  but  other  manufacturing  centers  report 

on  halfetSiSmeehereS1°n’  Wh’Ch  aCC°Un*  f°f  faCt0rieS  runnin« 

. i  <<The  return  °i  county  fees  collected  by  Socialist  officials  to 
the  county  treasury  has  brought  forth  commendation  from 
economists. 

.,“Th‘S  T'as  n^ver  done  before  in  the  history  of  the  country. 
Attempts  have  been  made  to  solve  the  social  evil  problems,  and 
advances  have  been  made  in  the  past  year  by  strict  regulation 
of  saloons  and  dance  halls.” 

A  Minister’s  View. 

“The  battle  between  light  and  darkness  is  fought  out  at  the 
ballot  box  as  well  as  in  a  man’s  soul.  There  is  a  party  of  dark- 
ness,  of  vice,  of  corruption,  of  crime. 

“A  majority  of  the  voters  of  this  city  evidently  believed  at 
the  last  election  that  the  quickest  way  to  end  the  rule  of  dark¬ 
ness  was  to  elect  the  Social-Democratic  ticket. 

“Many  of  them  never  read  Karl  Marx.  But  they  evidently 
did  believe  the  Social-Democrats  to  be  sincere,  honest,  trust¬ 
worthy,  public  spirited,  and  that  they  will  give  us  an  adminis¬ 
tration  along  the  lines  we  are  seeking.  They  represent  the  new 
spirit  in  our  national  life. 

‘And  I  say  to  our  Socialist  friends,  be  honest,  efficient, 
broad-minded,  progressive,  making  haste  slowly,  and  we  will 
vote- for  you  again.  We  are  tired  of  being  ruled  by  red  lights, 
special  interests,  absentees.  We  want  to  see  poverty  abolished,’ 
every  man  at  work,  the  sick  and  dependents  taken  care  of. 

“We  don’t  believe  the  lies  that  are  told  about  you.  We  be¬ 
lieve  you  are  as  moral  as  we  are;  that  you  love  your  homes  and 
your  flag  as  much  as  we  do.  You  are  American  citizens,  and 
our  neighbors.  You  have  preached  ideals  to  us;  now  put  them 
into  practice.  Be  to  us  the  political  expression  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  and  you  may  count  on  the  votes  of  all  Christian  men.” 
—Rev.  Frederick  Edwards,  St.  James’  Episcopal  Church. 

Ex-President  of  Harvard  University. 

"I  do  n<>t  know  about  the  accuracy  of  some  of  their  theo¬ 
retical  views — I  think  they  are  called  by  a  very  inaccurate  name. 
But  they  seem  to  have  a  true  conception  of  honest  municipal 
government,  not  for  their  own  benefit,  nor  for  the  benefit  of 
any  class,  but  for  the  common  good.”— Former  President  Eliot 
of  Harvard  University,  December,  1910,  after  a  visit  to  the 
Milwaukee  City  Hall. 

A  Fair,  Impartial  Judgment. 

“Justice  and  fair  play  demand  that  it  be  said  that  in  con-  t 
tfast  with  the  sort  of  social  service  and  municipal  service  Mil¬ 
waukee  ever  had  before  this  present  Seidel  administration  is 
wholly  excellent. 

“And  that  is  the  only  true  criterion.  Kansas  City  is  one 
of  the  few  most  fortunate  cities  in  the  country  in  the  large 
measure  of  its  freedom  to  attend  to  its  own  business.  The 
board  of  public  welfare  grew  from  this  home  rule  liberty. 
Milwaukee  has  no  such  freedom.  It  is  governed  largely  by 
state  laws.  Its  Socialists  cannot  set  up  a  Socialist  regime.  They 
can  simply  give  honest  and  efficient  administration  within  the 
limits  of  the  general  laws  of  the  land  and  the  specific  acts  of 
the  Wisconsin  legislature.  This  last  the  Socialist  administra- 


319 


tion  has  given  in  a  rare  degree — as  every  fair-minded,  impartial 
investigator  will  tell  you.” — Kansas  City  Star,  January  6,  1912. 

Professor  John  Graham  Brooks,  the  Noted  Sociologist,  Charmed 

With  Milwaukee  Socialist  Administration. 

“The  Socialists  in  Milwaukee  and  Butte  are  giving  these 
cities  the  best,  the  cleanest  and  most  satisfactory  business  ad¬ 
ministration  in  their  history  and  are  repairing  the  damage 
wrought  by  years  of  the  ofd  graft  regime. 

“In  Milwaukee  the  Socialists  came  into  office  greatly  handi¬ 
capped.  Their  city  was  heavily  in  debt.  They  are  devoting 
their  efforts  wisely,  to  the  cleaning  up  of  this  debt  and  to  the 
general  civic  clean-up,  doing  what  the  government  before  them 
did  not  do.” — Prof.  John  Graham  Brooks. 

“I  desire  to  be  fair  to  the  Socialist  administration,”  said  the 
banker,  “and  therefore  will  state  at  the  very  beginning  that  for 
the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  city,  Milwaukee  has  an  ad¬ 
ministration  free  from  graft — absolutely  open,  above  board  and 
honest  in  every  particular.  I  may  also  say  that  the  adminis¬ 
tration  has  shown  more  intelligence  as  to  municipal  science 
than  any  other  administration  the  city  has  ever  had.  There 
is  an  actual  and  persistent  effort  to  govern  the  city  on  highly 
scientific  lines  and  in  this  regard  the  administration  has  made 
a  deep  impression  on  that  portion  of  the  community  capable 
of  receiving  an  intellectual  impression  of  that  kind.” — A  Mil¬ 
waukee  banker,  who  wished  his  name  withheld.  Quoted  from 
Indianapolis  Star. 

“I  am  one  of  those  who  believe  that  the  Socialists  have 
given  the  best  administration  Milwaukee  ever  had.  No  more 
honest  body  of  men  have  ever  been  in  public  service  in  Amer¬ 
ica,  and  every  one  in  Milwaukee  knows  that. 

“All  Milwaukee  should  be  eternally  grateful  for  the  one 
group  of  men  who  have  given  the  city  a  decent  and  efficient 
administration.” — Professor  Charles  Zueblin,  Sociologist  and 
Lecturer. 

(c)  SOCIALIST  STATE  PROGRAM. 

The  program  of  the  Socialist  Party  for  state  legislation  has 
been  pretty  carefully  worked  out.  The  National  Conventions 
of  the  party  have  from  time  to  time  appointed  committeees  to 
elaborate  the  program  as  a  guide  to  the  Socialists  that  might 
be  elected  to  the  State  Legislature.  These  programs  have  been 
modified  and  improved  as  a  natural  result  of  the  experience  of 
its  members  who  have  been  elected  and  have  served  in  the  va¬ 
rious  State  Legislatures. 

The  following  outline  for  a  state  program  is  the  one  adopted 
by  the  National  Convention  of  the  party  at  Indianapolis  this 
year  (1912) : 

I. 

LABOR  LEGISLATION.  ' 

1.  An  eight  hour  day,  trades  union  scale  and  minimum  wage 
for  both  sexes. 

2.  Legalization  of  the  right  to  strike,  picket  and  boycott. 

1.  Abolition  of  the  injunction  as  a  means  of  breaking  strike* 
and  the  establishment  of  trial  by  jury  in  all  labor  disputes. 

4.  Prohibition  of  the  use  of  the  military  and  the  police  power 
to  break  strikes 

5.  Prohibition  of  tjie  employment  of  private  detective  agencies 
and  police  forces  in  labor  disputes. 

6.  The  repeal  of  all  military  law  which  surrenders  the  power 
of  the  governor  over  the  militia  to  the  federal  authorities. 

7.  Requirement  that  in  time  of  labor  disputes  advertisements 
for  help  published  by  employers  shall  contain  notice  of  the  fact 
that  such  labor  dispute  exists.  Provision  to  be  made  for  the 
prosecution  of  person  who  shall  employ  workers  without  inform¬ 
ing  them  that  such  labor  trouble  exists. 

8.  Prohibition  of  employment  of  children  under  the  age  of 
sixteen,  compulsory  education,  and  the  pensioning  of  widows 
with  minor  children  where  such  provision  is  necessary. 

9.  The  organization  of  state  employment  agencies  and  rigid 
control  of  private  agencies. 

10.  Suitable  safeguards  and  sanitary  regulations  in  all  occu- 


320 


pations  with  ample  provision  for  frequent  and  effective  inspec¬ 
tion  of  places  of  employment,  machinery  and  appliances. 

11.  Old  age  pensions,  sick  benefits  and  accident  insurance  to 
be  established. 

12.  Workingmen’s  compensation  laws  to  be  carefully  drawn  to 
protect  labor. 

n. 

Home  rule  for  cities. 

m.  PUBLIC  EDUCATION. 

1.  Compulsory  education  of  both  sexes  up  to  the  age  of  sixteen 
years  with  adequate  provision  for  further  courses  where  desired. 

2.  Establishment  of  vocational  and  continuation  schools  and 
manual  training  for  both  sexes. 

S.  Free  text  books  for  teachers  and  pupils;  uniform  text  books 
on  all  subjects  to  be  furnished  free  to  public  schools. 

4  Physical  training  through  systematic  courses  of  gymnastics 
and  open  air  exercises.  Open  air  schools  and  playgrounds. 

IV.  TAXATION. 

1.  A  graduated  income  tax;  wages  and  salaries  up  to  $3,000  to 
be  exempt. 

2.  Graduated  inheritance  tax. 

3.  All  land  held  for  speculation  and  all  land  not  occupied  or 
used  by  the  owners  to  be  taxed  up  to  full  rental  value. 

V.  PUBLIC  WORKS  AND  CONSERVATION. 

1.  For  the  purpose  of  developing  and  preserving  the  natural 
resources  of  the  state  and  offering  additional  opportunities  of 
labor  to  the  unemployed,  the  states  shall  undertake  a  compre¬ 
hensive  system  of  public  works,  such  as  the  building  of  roads, 
canals,  and  the  reclamation  and  irrigation  of  land.  All  forests, 
mineral  lands,  water  ways  and  natural  resources  now  owned  by 
the  states  to  be  conserved  and  kept  for  public  use. 

2.  The  contract  system  shall  be  abolished  in  all  public  works, 
such  work  to  be  done  by  the  state  directly,  all  labor  to  be  em¬ 
ployed  not  more  than  eight  hours  per  day  at  trade  union  wages 
and  under  the  best  possible  working  conditions. 

VI.  LEGISLATION. 

1.  The  legislature  of  the  state  to  consist  of  one  house  of  rep¬ 
resentatives. 

2.  The  initiative,  referendum  and  recall  to  be  enacted. 

VII.  EQUAL  SUFFRAGE. 

1.  Unrestricted  political  rights  for  men  and  women. 

2.  Resident  qualification  for  all  elections  not  to  exceed  90 
days. 

3.  The  right  to  vote,  not  to  be  contingent  upon  the  payment  of 

any  taxes,  either  in  money  or  labor.  \ 

VIII.  AGRICULTURE. 

1.  Extension  of  the  state  agricultural  and  experimental  farm* 
for  crop  culture,  for  the  distribution  of  improved  seeds,  for  the 
development  of  fertilizers,  for  the  design  and  introduction  of  the 
best  types  of  farm  machinery,  and  for  the  encouragement  of  the 
breeding  of  superior  types  of  stock. 

2.  All  land  owned  by  the  state  to  be  retained,  and  other  land 
brought  into  public  ownership  and  use  by  reclamation,  purchase, 
condemnation,  taxation  or  otherwise:  Such  land  to  be  organized 
into  socially  operated  farms  for  the  conduct  of  collective  agri¬ 
cultural  enterprises. 

3.  Landlords  to  assess  their  own  land,  the  state  reserving  the 
right  to  purchase  such  lands  at  the  assessed  value. 

4.  State  insurance  against  pestilence,  disease  of  animal*  and 
plants  and  against  natural  calamities. 

IX.  DEFECTIVES  AND  DELINQUENTS. 

1.  The  present  unscientific  and  brutal  method  of  treating 
criminal  persons,  defectives  and  delinquents  to  be  replaced  by 
modern  scientific  and  humane  methods.  This  to  include  the  aboli¬ 
tion  of  all  death  penalties,  of  the  prison  contract  system,  of  iso¬ 
lated  confinement.  Penal  institutions  to  be  located  in  rural  locali¬ 
ties  with  adequate  healthful  open  air  employment  and  human* 
treatment. 

State  Legislative  Work  of  the  Socialist  Party. 
(National  Office  Leaflet,  By  Carl  D.  Thompson.) 

Some  folks  object  to  Socialism  because  they  say — it’s  im¬ 
practical — it  won’t  work. 

We  are  going  to  answer  that  objection. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Socialists  are  the  most  practical 
people  in  the  world  today. 

Socialists  have  the  most  definite,  concrete  and  compreheP' 
sive  program  for  the  solution  of  present-day  problems. 

We  shall  make  that  clear  in  this  leaflet.  We  shall  do  so  by- 
presenting  in  the  briefest  outline  the  actual  achievements  of 


American  Socialists  in  the  legislatures  where  the  party  has  had 
representatives. 

W  shall  not  refer  to  the  splendid  record  of  Socialists  in  the 
numerous  municipalities  where  they  have  been  more  or  less  in 
power.  We  shall  present  here  only  the  results  of  the  Socialist 
legislative  activities  as  an  illustration  of  their  practical  work. 

What  Socialists  Have  Done. 

The  Socialists  in  the  state  legislatures  of  this  country  have 
accomplished  three  things: 

FIRST — They  have  actually  succeeded  in  putting  into  the 
statute  books  of  the  various  states  some  141  different  laws. 

SECOND — They  have  been  indirectly  instrumental  and  as¬ 
sisted  in  putting  on  many  more. 

THIRD— They  have  prepared  with  great  care  and  com¬ 
pleteness  the  definite,  concrete  legislative  measures  that  make 
up  the  Socialist  program. 

Thus  the  specific  measures  by  which  the  principles  of  So¬ 
cialism  may  be  applied  have  been  reduced  .to  the  cold  letter  of 
the  law  and  deposited  in  the  official  records  of  a  dozen  different 
states  and,  we  may  add,  in  Congress  of  the  United  States  as 
well. 

Twenty- One  Socialists  in  Nine  State  Legislatures. 

Last  winter  (1913)  there  were  21  Socialists  in  nine  different 
state  legislatures. 

That’s  a  good  start,  isn’t  it?  We  had  seven  in  Wisconsin, 
four  in  Illinois,  three  in  Kansas,  two  in  Nevada,  and  one  each 
in  California,  Massachusetts,  Minnesota,  Montana  and  Wash¬ 
ington. 

In  fact  the  Socialists  have  had  here  and  there  representa¬ 
tives  in  the  state  legislatures  since  1899. 

In  judging  of  their  work  and  the  possibilities  in  this  direc¬ 
tion,  we  must  remember  that  in  every  case  the  Socialists  were  in 
a  hopeless  minority — one  against  100,  or  maybe  three  against 
150.  And  yet-  they  have  put  things  through. 

You  really  could  not  expect  one  or  two  lone  Socialists  in  & 
state  legislature  of  150  men  to  accomplish  very  much.  Especially 
as  the  rest  of  the  150  are  for  the  most  part  steeped  and  pickled 
in  capitalism  and  owned,  body  and  soul,  by  the  monopolies  and 
trusts,  or  else  so  uninformed  on  economic  questions  as  to  be 
easy  tools  of  the  capitalist  politicians. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  all  that,  these  Socialists  accomplished  some¬ 
thing.  They  got  things  through — and  it  is  no  small  record  of 
actual  achievement. 

One  Hundred  Forty-one  Successful  Socialist  Measures. 

Of  course,  we  do  not  claim  all  the  credit  for  passing  these 
laws.  None  of  them  could  have  been  passed  without  the  votes 
of  others  than  Socialists — it  is  true.  But  these  measures,  ad¬ 
vanced  and  urged  and  pushed  through  by  the  Socialists,  show 
the  practical  and  constructive  nature  of  the  Socialist  movement. 

The  following  are  the  bills  introduced  by  Socialists  and 
PASSED  by  the  state  legislatures  of  one  or  the  other  of  the 
states  in  which  the  Socialists  had  representatives,  viz.,  Cali¬ 
fornia,  Illinois,  Kansas,  Massachusetts,  Minnesota,  Nevada, 
Washington  and  Wisconsin. 

I.  LABOR  MEASURES. 

1.  Eight-hour  day  on  public  contract  work  (Wisconsin). 

2.  Ten-hour  law  for  women,  55  hours  per  week;  and  in  night 
work  not  more  than  eight  hours,  nor  more  than  48  hours  per 

week. 


3.  Better  protection  on  dangerous  machinery  in  factories 

...LSrs  ”  *"  d 

S.'SiTh”  “J'l"" W, 

6.  Bath  houses  for  miners  (Kansas). 

.  ,  .,fequinn8:  employers,  in  advertising  for  workmen  in  time 

a0dvSmtentrnt,On  ^  faCt  °f  the  Strike  W 

sas)8'  Be“er  Pr°tecti0n  of  heaIth  safety  of  miners  (Kan- 

(K!nsas.)gUlating  5316  and  de,ivery  of  black  powder  to  miners 
10.  Workmen’s  compensation  act 
ings '  (Minnesota)”  °f  W°rkingmen  in  the  construction  of  build- 
12.  Better  ventilation  in  factories. 

14  Siht-hT,  day  on  public  contracts  (Wisconsin). 

14.  Making  false  statement  in  securing  employes  a  misde- 
meanor,  punishable  by  fine  and  imprisonment  (Minnesota) 

lie  s5afetv’CasSln8il0f  statl°nary  engineers  in  the  interests  of  pub- 
lie  satety,  as  well  as  workingmen.  P 

16.  Factory  doors  must  be  unlocked  during  working  hours. 

vices  equiring  employers  to  install  and  maintain  safety  de- 

as  news b'oys,0 etc.  C°nditi°nS  °f  Chi'dren  W°rking  “  Street  ‘*d«. 

19  Requiring  safety  appliances  on  corn  shredders,  which 
*  have  been  particularly  deadly  to  farm  labor. 

ployes  Requiring  the  keePin£  of  records  of  injuries  to  cm* 

21.  Prohibiting  overcrowding  of  factories  and  requiring  cer¬ 
tain  safety  appliances. 

22.  Child  labor— several  measures  improving  conditions. 

P™bibitin£  the  use  of  injunctions  in  the  case  of  labor 
troubles  (Wisconsin). 

24.  Defining  tuberculosis  as  a  communicable  disease  so  a» 
to  bring  it  within  the  statistics  of  the  state  health  department, 
tuberculosis  being  regarded  by  the  Socialists  as  an  occupational 
disease;  this  measure  opens  the  way  for  an  adequate  compensa¬ 
tion  law  (Montana). 

25.  Requiring  employers  to  reduce  the  number  of  hours  of 
labor  of  children  between  14  and  16,  in  proportion  to  the  num¬ 
ber  of  hours  spent  in  attendance  at  continuation  schools,  where 
such  exist. 

26.  Sunday  dosing  of  stores  (except  groceries  and  meat 
maikets),  releasing  clerks  and  other  employes  from  Sunday 
drudgery. 


II.  POLITICAL  MEASURES. 

1.  Partial  initiative  and  referendum;  joint  resolution  calling 


...  —  .v.v.wimuui,  jwiiiL  tcautuuun  cduiiq 

tor  constitutional  amendment  empowering  legislature  to  volun¬ 
tarily  submit  measures  for  popular  approval. 

2.  Initiative  and  referendum  in  municipalities. 

3.  Recall  of  elected  officials  in  municipalities. 

4.  Resolution  passed  by  the  state  Assembly  of  Illinois  ex¬ 
pressing  sympathy  for  the  Belgian  suffrage  strike. 

5.  Making  election  day  a  half  holiday. 


III.  MUNICIPAL  MEASURES. 


1.  Home  rule  for  cities.  Several  measures  passed.  Measure 
similar  to  that  drawn  by  Socialists  passed  in  Illinois. 

2.  Excess  condemnation;  granting  cities  the  right  to  buy  and 


323 

sell  real  estate  in  excess  of  that  required  for  immediate  public 
purposes  (Wisconsin). 

3.  Giving  cities  the  right  to  build  ice  plants. 

4.  Providing  for  the  appointment  of  a  city  forester. 

5.  Giving  cities  the  right  to  erect  comfort  stations. 

6.  Providing  for  the  abatement  of  the  smoke  nuisance. 

7.  Giving  cities  the  right  to  build  repair  docks. 

IV.  EDUCATIONAL  MEASURES. 

1.  School  lunches,  giving  cities  the  right  to  provide  (Mas¬ 
sachusetts). 

2.  Compulsory  attendance  at  schools. 

3.  Minimum  wage  for  teachers. 

4.  Free  nignt  schools  (Kansas). 

5.  Compulsory  education  of  illiterate  minors  (Wisconsin). 

V.  JUDICIAL  MEASURES. 

A  number  of  measures  making  the  securing  of  justice 
through  the  courts  cheaper  and  easier  for  the  workingmen. 

1.  Raising  the  amount  of  damages  that  may  be  awarded  in 
cases  of  employes  killed  by  accident  from  $5,000  to  $10,000 
(Wisconsin). 

2.  Eliminating  the  requirement  of  security  bond  in  case  of 
damage  suit  against  the  city. 

VI.  MISCELLANEOUS. 

1.  Mothers’  pension  lavr,  passed  in  a  modified  form  (Massa¬ 
chusetts). 

2.  Provision  for  better  care  of  neglected  children  in  Nevada. 

3.  Old  age  pensions  were  provided  for  by  measures  passed 
in  Kansas  and  Wisconsin.  In  the  former  state  it  was  a  memorial 
addressed  to  Congress  and  in  the  latter  it  provides  for  an 
investigation  of  the  subject. 

4.  State  life  insurance.  Wisconsin  is  now  in  the  life  insur¬ 
ance  business. 

5.  Taxation.  Twelve  bills  were  introduced  and  passed  in 
Wisconsin  readjusting  the  basis  of  taxation  to  the  full  valua¬ 
tion. 

6.  Pensions  for  the  blind. 

7.  A  law  providing  for  the  proper  organization  and  conduct 
of  co-operative  enterprises. 

8.  Public  ownership  of  railways;  a  measure  introduced  by 
the  Socialists  in  the  Minnesota  legislature,  authorizing  Cook 
county,  of  that  state,  to  build  a  railway. 

9.  Loans  to  farmers;  a  joint  resolution  passed  in  the  Wis¬ 
consin  legislature  petitioning  Congress  ,to  permit  loans  to  farm¬ 
ers  of  30  per  cent  of  the  postal  savings  deposits. 

10.  Resolution  urging  government  ownership  of  coal  mines 
(passed  Massachusetts  House). 

The  Complete  Program  Will  Follow. 

A  hundred  and  forty-one  measures  of  that  kind,  secured 
by  the  merest  minority  of  representatives,  is  surely  a  good 
beginning. 

But  it  is  only  the  beginning. 

The  measures  mentioned  above  are,  after  all,  only  the  less 
important  parts  of  the  program  of  Socialism.  They  are  such 
as  the  old  party  politicians  thought  they  were  compelled  to 
pass,  throwing  them  out  as  a  sop  to  the  growing  Socialist  senti¬ 
ment  in  the  country.  They  hope  thereby  to  stop  Socialism,  not 
to  advance  it. 

We  want  no  one  to  think  that  these  sops  are  Socialism. 


824 


wanBtythne°wh:ienso„re  S°mething  m°re  ‘han  S°pS'  We 

We  are  going  to  take  all  the  sops  they  give  and  therehv 
gain  strength  to  get  the  whole  feed.  'by 

But  the  point  we  are  making  here  is  that  thp  t-  . 

winning 

;gzr" ■ ,le  ""■»»*  *"•>  *• 


The  Socialists  will  push  their  campaigns.  They  will  elect 
more  representatives  in  the  states  where  they  already  have 
them.  They  will  win  seats  in  new  states.  They  will  capture 

UnTted  StT  rGy  WlH  Contro1  state  legislatures  and,  finall^  the 
United  States  Congress  and  the  Supreme  Court 

lhe  rest  is  easy. 

Meanwhile  every  step  will  be  marked  by  some  additional 
gam.  We  do  not  need  to  wait  for  final  victory  before  we  begin 
to  get  results.  The  record  above  abundantly  demonstrates  that. 

~  as  their  P°wer  and  influence  grows,  the  more  vital  and 
effective  measures  of  the  program  will  go  through. 

day  °n  the  public  works  is  followed  by  the 
eight-hour  day  on  contract  work  for  the  public.  The  next  step 
will  be  a  universal  eight-hour  day.  P 

?‘*te  H-u  i?sura,nce  wil1  be  followed  by  state  insurance 
aga“!st  accident,  sickness,  out  of  work  and  old  age. 

Ihe  ten-hour  day  for  women  will  be  followed  by  the  eight- 
^ay’  anc*  ^ater  by  the  six-hour  day,  perhaps. 

.e ,  flgbt ;,of  a  city  t0  own  ’a  plant  will  be  followed  by 
the  right  of  the  city  to  own  and  operate  all  public  utilities. 

Cities  acting  under  the  freedom  of  home  rule  will  take  over 
one  after  the  other  of  their  public  utilities.  Hundreds  of  them 
are  doing  so  already,  all  over  the  world.  It  is  perfectly  prac¬ 
tical.  Socialism  will  push  the  tendency  to  its  logical  conclusion. 

As  each  utility  is  taken  over,  wages  will  be  raised,  hours 
shortened,  the  conditions  improved  and  the  rates  reduced.  This 
is  exactly  what  is.  happening  on  a  small  scale  everywhere.  So¬ 
cialists  will  push  it  on  a  large  scale. 

States  under  the  direction  of  this  Socialist  program,  and 
finally  the  nation,  will  take  over  one  after  the  other  of  their 
public  utilities,  mines,  railroads,  interurban  electric  lines,  power 
plants,  telegraph  and  telephone  systems,  waterways,  forests. 
And  all  this  may  be  done  by  methods  perfectly  legal  and  con¬ 
stitutional. 


Just  as  the  government  already  owns  and  operates  the  postal 
system;  just  as  the  public  schools  are  publicly  owned  and  oper¬ 
ated;  just  as  more  than  seventy  nations  already  own  and  suc¬ 
cessfully  operate  their  railway  systems;  so  Socialism  will  push 
the.  program  until  all  public  utilities — municipal,  state  and 
national — are  publicly  owned  and  democratically  operated. 

.  And  as  each  of  these  utilities  are  taken  over,  the  Socialists 
will  see  to  it  that  the  workers  are  guaranteed  the  right  to 
organize,  wages  are  raised,  hours  shortened,  conditions  improved 
and  the  cost  of  the  service  reduced.  The  profits  arising  from 
the  operation  of  each  public  utility  will  be  used  in  the  further 
extension  of  the  utility  or  in  the  purchase  of  other  utilities, 
until  all  are  socialized.  The  returns  to  labor  may  then  be 
further  increased  and  the  cost  of  living  reduced  until  profits  are 
eliminated  and  all  unearned  incomes  abolished. 

And  so  on  until  economic  justice  is  established  and  the  gates 
of.  the  co-operative  commonwealth  are  opened  to  the  people  of 
this  nation. 

Is  this  not  a  practical  program? 

There  is  nothing  else  that  is  practical. 


825 

(d)  SOCIALIST  NATIONAL  PROGRAM. 

A  Socialist  in  Congress. 

In  the  November  election  of  1910  the  Socialists  of  Milwaukee 
succeeded  in  electing  Victor  L.  Berger  to  the  United  States 
-Congress  from  the  Fifth  Wisconsin  District.  He  was  the  first 
Socialist  ever  elected  to  that  body. 

Congressman  Berger  served  the  regular  term  of  two  years. 
His  record  serves  to  complete  the  outlined  illustration  of  the 
legislative  program  of  the  Socialist  party  as  shown  by  the 
representatives  of  the  party  in  office. 

One  Against  Five  Hundred. 

In  judging  the  work  of  Congressman  Berger,  the  fact  that  he 
was  -only  one  member  out  of  a  total  of  392  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  should  be  considered. 

And  this  was  not  the  only  limitation  by  any  means.  There 
were  not  only  391  Representatives  “against  him,  there  were  96 
Senators  also  absolutely  opposed  to  him  on  all  vital  and  eco¬ 
nomic  questions. 

It  was  practically  five  hundred  against  one.  For  while  there 
are  a  few  representatives  in  the  House  of  Representatives  who 
are  trades  unionists,  are  supposed  to  be  representatives  of  the 
working  class,  yet  in  their  voting,  their  arguments  and  in 
their  way  of  thinking  they  differ  in  no  way  from  the  representa- 
taves  of  the  old  capitalistic  parties. 

I.  LABOR  MEASURES. 

1.  Resolution  to  Investigate  the  Lawrence  Strike  Situation. 
—In  the  latter  part  of  1911  and  the  early  part  of  1912,  there 
occurred  among  the  textile  workers  in  Lawrence,  Massachu¬ 
setts,  a  most  serious  and  remarkable  strike.  When  the  appalling 
conditions,  the  starvation  wages,  the  brutal  treatment  of  men, 
women  and  little  children  and  the  wanton  killing  of  a  woman 
by  the  police  and  militia  became  known  to  Congressman  Berger, 
he  at  once  took  the  matter  up  in  Congress.  He  introduced  a 
resolution  to  have  a  commission  investigate  “The  Relations  of 
the  American  Woolen  Company  to  the  Strike  of  Its  Operatives 
at  Lawrence,  Massachusetts.” 

The  resolution  was  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Rules  and 
before  this  committee  hearings  were  held  that  in  themselves 
served  as  an  investigation.  They  brought  out  in  an  official  way 
the  condition  in  Lawrence.  The  hearings  were  published  in 
File  464  of  a  special  report,  known  as  Document  No.  671,  on 
“The  Strike  at  Lawrence,  Mass.” 

Labor  Conditions  and  the  Tariff. 

For  half  a  century  our  protective  tariff  politicians  have  urged 
a  high  tariff  on  the  ground  of  its  alleged  benefits  to  labor.  Here 
is  the  man  to  put  their  proposition  to  a  final  test.  And  he  did 
it  in  the  case  of  the  woolen  industries  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave 
not  an  iota  of  doubt  or  question  remaining. 

“The  American  Woolen  Company,”  he  said  in  his  statement 
in  the  hearing  on  the  Lawrence  strike  (page  9),  “has  for  years 
been  the  recipient  of  a  government  subsidy  in  the  form  of  a 
high  tariff.  The  claim  has  been  made  that  this  high  tariff  is 
levied  in  order  to  protect  labor.  Yet  in  spite  of  this  claim  it  is 
generally  conceded  that  these  operatives  are  among  the  lowest 
paid  of  those  of  any  industry  in  America.  *  *  *  It  can  be  shown 
that  not  only  do  highly  protected  industries  pay  extremely  low 
wages  in  the  face  of  a  constant  rise  in  the  cost  of  living,  but 
also  that  the  tendency  is  to  pay  lower  wages  compared  with  an 


326 


‘n"t.ase. ?  produ.c.t’  and  to  get  more  work  out  of  the  workers  by 
constantly  speeding  them  up. 

factsf  fought  out  by  the  investigation  of  the  appalling 
conditmns  of  the  textile  workers  at  Lawrence,  reviewed  above, 
and  further  facts  presented  by  Congressman  Berger  in  his 
speeches  and  debates  on  the  various  tariff  measures,  served  to 
rip  the  mask  off  this  monstrous  hypocrisy  of  our  government’s 
policy  and  leave  it  completely  exposed. 

He  said  frankly:  “I  am  no  free  trader.  I  hold  that  under 
the  present  capitalist  system  of  industry  a  sudden  and  violent 
reduction  of  tariff  schedules  would  in  almost  every  case  be  dis¬ 
astrous  to  the  workers. 


“Here  is  a  case, .  however,  where  one  of  the  most  highly 
protected  industries  in  America,  which  begs  its  tariff  protection 
from  Congress  on  the  ground  of  benefiting  the  wage  earners, 
deliberately  forces  down  wages  to  the  starvation  point.”  And 
on  that  ground  he  maintained  his  stand  for  reduction  of  the 
tariff,  especially  on  the  highly  protected  industries  while  not 
advocating  free  trade. 

2.  Eight-hour  Day  for  All  Labor  Employed  on  Government 
Contract  Work. 

3.  A  General  Old  Age  Pension  Bill.— The  fact  that  many 
of  the  progressive  countries  already  have  some  such  legislation 
as  this  tended  to  greatly  strengthen  Mr.  Berger’s  position.  The 
introduction  of  the  bill  started  a  widespread  and  mostly  favor¬ 
able  discussion  of  the  whole  subject. 

4.  The  Right  of  Postal  Employes  of  Government  to  Organ¬ 
ize  and  Petition  Congress. — The  public  must  be  the  model 
employer.  A  government  in  the  control  of  capitalistic  interests 
might  take  over  public  utilities,  suppress  the  right  of  organiza¬ 
tion,  free  speech  and  petition  and  thus  become  the  most  tyran¬ 
nous  of  labor  oppressions.  This  tendency  has  manifested  itself 
already  on  the  public  railways  in  foreign  countries  where  the 
right  of  the  workers  to  organize  and  strike  has  been  violently 
suppressed.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact  these  rights  are  being 
denied  here  in  America. 

They  must  be  maintained  at  all  hazards.  They  are  vital  to  • 
the  cause  of  labor  and  fundamental  to  the  purpose  of  Socialism. 

.  5.  A  Bill  to  protect  the  Women  Wage  Workers  in  the  Dis¬ 
trict  of  Columbia. — This  provides  for  an  eight-hour  day,  for  one 
day’s  rest  in  each  week,  prohibiting  the  employment  of  girls 
under  eighteen  years  of  age  before  seven  in  the  morning  or  after 
six  at  night. 


6.  Protest  Against  Starvation  Wages. — In  a  speech  in  the 
House,  January  14,  1912,  Mr.  Berger  denounced  the  Democratic 
appropriation  bill  fot  the  District  of  Columbia  because  of  the 
extremely  low  wages  provided  for  some  of  the  public  employes. 
Some  were  getting  as  low  as  $240  a  year. 

A  similar  protest  was  made  in  a  speech  on  March  4,  1912, 
against  the  low  wages  paid  to  the  employes  in  the  Department 
of  Agriculture. 


7.  For  Better  Conditions  for  the  Workers. — In  the  bill 
introduced  by  Mr.  Berger  for  a  new  post  office  building  at  Wau¬ 
kesha,  Wisconsin,  the  spirit  of  the  Socialist  legislation  is  again 
illustrated.  Careful  provision  was  made  in  the  drafting  of  the 
bill  for  the  comfort,  health  and  convenience  of  the  workers. 

Other  measures  providing  for  the  comfort  and  convenience 
of  the  workers  were  introduced.  An  amendment  to  pending 
legislation  was  introduced  by  Mr.  Berger  on  May  1,  1912,  to 
permit  postal  employes  to  use  stools  for  at  least  two  hours  a 
day.  And  the  amendment  came  near  carrying.  The  vote  stood 
35  for  to  55  against. 

Mr.  Berger’s  efforts  to  secure  relief  for  the  mail  carriers 
from  their  hot  and  heavy  uniforms  in  summer  was  even  more 


327 


successful.  In  this  case  he  took  the  matter  up  directly  with  the 
Post  Office  Department,  and  secured  a  modification  of  the 
hitherto  strict  orders. 

8.  Providing  an  Automatic  Reward  for  Faithful  Service. — 
On  April  19,  1912,  Mr.  Berger  introduced  an  amendment  pro¬ 
viding  for  the  automatic  promotion  of  all  postal  employes  from 
the  $1,100  grade  to  the  $1,200  grade.  This  amendment  also 
came  very  near  to  success,  the  vote  being  33  for  to  45  against. 

9.  The  One  Day’s  Rest  in  Seven. — Besides  other  labor 
measures  in  which  one  day’s  rest  in  seven  was  sought  for  the 
employes  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  Mr.  Berger  took  up  the 
matter  of  providing  a  six-day  week  for  all  government  employes. 
The  matter  came  up  in  connection  with  an  investigation  which 
Berger  made,  revealing  the  fact  that  many  of  the  employes, 
especially  in  the  Treasury  Department,  were  compelled  to  work 
;seven  days  in  the  week. 

10.  Helping  in  Labor  Troubles  and  Disputes. — One  of  the 
first  things  Mr.  Berger  did  was  to  introduce  a  resolution  de¬ 
manding  an  investigation  of  the  McNamara  case.  He  also  in¬ 
troduced  a  bill  to  prevent  kidnapping  of  labor  officials. 

11.  To  Solve  the  Problem  of  the  Unemployed.— The  fea¬ 
tures  of  Congressman  Berger’s  bill  are  as  follows:  (a)  The 
United  States  government  is  to  issue  and  loan  money  to  county, 
*city  and  town  governments  enabling  them  to  inaugurate  public 
improvements,  (b)  These  loans  are  to  pay  interest  at  one-half 
per  cent  per  annum,  and  shall  be  redeemed  in  twenty  equal 
annual  installments,  (c)  Loans  to  be  secured  by  special  bonds 
issued  by  the  local  governments,  (d)  Upon  this  basis  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  shall  issue  a  special  currency  to  be 
known  as  “Public  Improvements  Notes”  to  be  loaned  to  the 
local  governments.  Each  year  the  secretary  shall  withdraw 
from  circulation  and  destroy  an  amount  of  this  currency  equal 
to  the  value  of  the  bonds  redeemed,  (e)  And  finally  the  bill 
provided  that  the  work  undertaken  under  these  loans  shall  be 
carried  out  with  an  eight-hour  work  day  and  at  not  less  than 
the  prevailing  union  rate  of  wages. 

II.  THE  TRUST  PROBLEM— THE  SOCIALIST 
SOLUTION. 

The  Socialist  solution  of  the  Trust  Problem  is  outlined  in 
°the  bill  presented  in  Congress  by  Mr.  Berger  on  December  4, 
1912. 

The  plan  proposes  that  whenever  any  corporation  or  com¬ 
bination  reaches  a  point  where  it  controls  forty  per  cent  of  the 
output  or  service  in  its  line,  then  it  shall  be  acquired,  owned 
and  operated  by  the  United  States  Government  for  the  benefit 
of  the  whole  people. 

In  this  connection  special  mention  should  be  made  of  Con¬ 
gressman  Berger’s  bill  for  the  government  ownership  of  the 
railroads,  express,  telegraph  and  telephone  companies. 

Victor  Berger,  the  Socialist  Congressman  from  Milwaukee, 
introduced  in  the  House  of  Representatives  a  bill  embodying 
the  following  features: 

“The  government  shall  immediately  proceed  to  take  over  the 
government  of  all  the  trusts  that  control  more  than  forty  per 
cent  of  the  business  in  their  respective  lines.  t:' 

The  price  to  be  paid  for  these  industries  shall  fye  fixed  by 
a  commission  of  fifteen  experts,  whose  duty  it  shall  be  to  deter¬ 
mine  the  actual  cash  value  of  the  physical  properties. 

Payment  for  the  properties  shall  be  offered  in  the  form  of 
United  States  bonds,  bearing  two  per  cent  interest  payable  in 
fifty  years,  and  a  sinking  fund  shall  be  established  to  retire  the 
.bonds  at  maturity. 

In  the  event  of  the  refusal  of  any  trust  owner  or  owners  to 


Ml 

and  hold  possession  of  the  properties  y  neCeSSary  ‘°  gain 
HI.  THE  REAL  DEMOCRACY. 

‘the 

power‘°of  °the  Lprl'Z  Court 

”-"irr!  - ra*  -ssiss’iss; 

A  moment  s  consideration  on  the  part  of  any  student  of  onr 
forms  of  government  will  show  that  each  nf  ?  of  0Ur 

recall  Leglslatlon*— The  initiative,  referendum  and  the 

call  are  today  pretty  popular  ideas  among  the  people. 

mn,Ut  most  Pe°Ple  do  not  know  that  these  ideas  in  their 

and  have^ot 

and  the  workers  in  their  organizations  for  half  a  century 

ctlT°  r„  C°ngreSsman  Ber«er  introduced  in  the  United 
for  the?nfroHeSVan  atme1ndment  t0  the  constitution  providing 
into  the  fed  d  1  .  °f  thre  br°ad  princiPle  of  direct  legislation 

“  concrete  form^he”  gove.rnment-  be  was  only  completing 
\  fo  ^  th.e.  universal  program  of  Socialism  for  the 

establishment  of  political  democracy. 

2.  Abolish  the  United  States  Senate.— Anv  numher  of 
studies  of  the  history  of  the  United  States  Senate  as  well  as  aU 

the  UnftedeXSterflenCQS  °f  reCent  yearS  estahlished  the  fact  that 
the  United  States  Senate  not  only  serves  no  purpose  in  the 

-y-a « check? 17*1  called.  3  hindranCe  *>  democ- 

th S'  However, thi? 
so-called  remedy  is  only  superficial.  Abolish  the  Senate. 

3.  Limit  the  Power  of  the  Supreme  Court.— Socialist  Con¬ 
gressman  Berger  has  pointed  out  the  way. 

When  he  introduced  his  bill  for  old  age  pensions  he 
appended  a  section  as  follows:  “That  in  accordance  with 

f®ct‘?.n.  a’  ‘5rtl?  e  3’  of.  the  Constitution,  and  the  precedent 
established  by  the  act  of  Congress  passed  over  the  President’s 
veto  March  27,  1868,  the  exercise  of  jurisdiction  by  any  of  the 

forbidden0.”18  UP°n  VaHdi‘y  °f  tWs  3Ct  is  hereby  e*PressIy 

The  precedent  referred  to  was  a  case  relative  to  certain  of 
tne  reconstruction  laws  which  grew  out  of  the  Civil  War.  The 
Supreme  Court  had  in  that  case  been  expressly  prohibited  from 
passing  upon  the  validity  of  the  acts.  The  Supreme  Court  itself 
held  unanimously  at  that  time  that  the  prohibition  was  valid  and 
declined  to  pass  on  the  constitutionality  of  the  laws  in  question. 

thus  an  entirely  new  principle  is  established.  The  power 
of  the  Supreme  Court  to  annul  legislation  exists  only  so  long 
as  Congress  consents  to  or  permits  it. 

7dl^emed?  's  simpIy  *or  Congress  to  expressly  prohibit  it. 

4.  Womans  Suffrage.— Socialists  the  world  over  have 
always  felt  that  there  could  be  no  such  thing  as  democracy 
where  one-half  of  the  adult  population  are  denied  the  ballot. 


829 

As  a  matter  of  course,  therefore,  they  have  always  fought  for 
the  ballot  for  woman. 

In  accord  with  this  general  position  of  the  Socialist  move¬ 
ment,  Congressman  Berger  presented  in  Congress  a  resolution 
for  a  constitutional  amendment  providing  for  woman’s  suffrage. 
This  he  later  backed  up  by  a  monster  petition,  probably  the 
largest  petition  ever  presented  to  Congress,  signed  by  109,582 
individuals  and  by  organizations  representing  approximately 
7,500  more — a  total  of  116,582. 

5.  A  National  Convention. — As  a  final  means  of  correcting 
quickly  the  many  defects  of  our  present  national  constitution 
and  thus  making  progress  more  easy  and  effective,  it  is  also 
proposed  that  a  national  constitutional  convention  be  called. 

IV.  MISCELLANEOUS  MEASURES. 

1.  The  Municipal  Government  of  Washington,  D.  C. — Mr. 
Berger  was  made  a  member  of  the  committee  to  investigate 
misrule  and  mismanagement  of  the  local  administration  of 
Washington.  The  result  of  the  investigations  that  followed 
was  a  number  of  measures  intended  to  improve  the  condition 
of  the  city  industrially  as  well  as  in  a  civic  way. 

2.  The  Case  of  Judge  Hanford. — Another  matter  that  called 
forth  the  aggressive  action  of  Congressman  Berger  was  the 
case  of  the  misconduct  of  Federal  Judge  Hanford  of  Seattle, 
Washington. 

Immediately  upon  hearing  of  his  official  misconduct,  Con¬ 
gressman  Berger  demanded  his  impeachment  and  removal.  He 
charged  the  judge  with  an  unlawful  usurpation  of  -power  in 
annulling  the  naturalization  papers  of  one  Leonard  Oleson  on 
the  frivolous  charge  that  he  was  a  Socialist;  with  rendering 
corrupt  decisions;  with  habitual  drunkenness,  and  with  issuing 
fraudulent  injunctions. 

That  these  charges  were  well  founded  was  shown  by  sub¬ 
sequent  events.  The  judge  resigned  in  an  evident  attempt  to 
escape  impeachment. 

V.  INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS  AND  PEACE. 

Among  the  first  duties  of  Congressman  Berger  was  the  pre¬ 
sentation  of  a  resolution  asking  the  President  of  the  United 
States  to  withdraw  the  troops  from  the  Mexican  border. 
Another  measure  was  a  resolution  to  terminate  the  treaty  of 
1887  between  the  United  States  and  Russia. 

In  a  carefully  prepared  statement  given  out  to  the  press, 
Mr.  Berger  showed  how  the  Socialist  movement  in  foreign 
countries  had  already  prevented  several  wars  and  how,  as  their 
power  increased,  they  would  soon  be  in  a  position  to  prevent 
and  certainly  would  prevent  all  wars  of  mere  capitalistic 
aggression. 

There  are  two  terrific  forces  that  the  Socialists  will  use — the 
power  of  their  representatives  in  the  parliaments  of  the  various 
nations,  already  numerous  enough  in  many  countries  to  hold 
the  balance  of  power,  and  the  power  of  the  organized  workers 
of  a  nation  using  the  weapon  of  the  general  strike. 

Both  these  forces  are  growing  every  day.  The  solid  vote 
of  a  Socialist  group  in  a  national  parliament  against  a  war 
measure,  would  already  make  it  impractical  in  some  countries. 
But  a  general  strike  against  a  war  would  absolutely  paralyze 
a  nation  that  undertook  it. 

BERGER’S  BILLS. 

Special  Session,  April  4-Ang.  22,  1011. 

April  5 — (H.  J.  Res.  29)  Joint  resolution  demanding  withdrawal 
from  the  Mexican  border. 

April  19 — (H.  J.  Res.  71)  Joint  resolution  for  a  constitutional 
amendment  giving  Congress  the  right  to  call  a  constitu¬ 
tional  convention. 


sso 

April  25  (H.  Con.  Hes.  61)  Concurrent  resolution  demanding  an 

April  27inTH  rS,  °7q\he  Tki-d^appinf  °f  John  J'  McNamara. 

April  (H.  J.  Res.  79)  Joint  resolution  for  a  constitutional 

fh^Rr1116^  f>0li^ing  the  Senate  and  the  veto  power of 
the  President  and  of  the  Supreme  Court 

May  17~(H-  Rr;9765!>  Bill  for  the  erection  of  a  postoffice  in  Wau- 
onsm,  with  such  structural  conveniences  as 

wo4.e0nq1orlbetImp,Sldefherye^nd  C°mf°rt  °‘  the  men  and 

May  22Th?MstHcV  of  ,CBo"umwLeSU‘ate  W°man  and  0hlW  labor  ln 

May  3°— (H.  R.  10863)  Bill  to  revise  the  interstate  extradition 

June  8-(H.hR.DU382,t  speaker^  automobile 

Joly  28-®-hK-F13043)  prohibit  empioyment  of  children 

July  31—  (H.  R.  13114)  Bill  to  provide  old-age  pensions 

July  31  (H.  J.  Res.  138)  Joint  resolution  for  appointment  of  a 

commission  to  report  on  old-age  pensions 

Regular  Sessionli  Dec.  4,  1911. 

December  4— (H  R  14079)  Bill  to  repeal  the  anti-trust  act  and 
tain  industries  socia^  ownership  and  operation  of  cer- 

December  20— (H  J.  Res.  192)  Joint  resolution  for  the  termina- 
Uon  of  the  treaty  of  1887-93  between  the  United  States 
ana  jtcussra. 

1912— 

January  9— -(H  R.  17476)  Bill  to  create  a  public  store  in  Wash¬ 
ington  for  civil  service  employes. 

January  16— (H.  J  Res.  213)  Joint  resolution  for  a  constitu- 
tional  amendment  extending  the  suffrage  to  women. 

January  16— (H.  Res.  376)  House  resolution  directing  the  Com¬ 
missioner  of  Labor  to  prepare  a  report  on  old-age  pen- 
sioxis* 

January  31— (H.  R.  19126)  Bill  for  government  ownership  and 
operation  of  railroads,  telegraphs,  telephones  and  ex- 

PT6SS6S* 

February  1— (H.  Res.  404)  House  resolution  to  investigate  the 
strike  on  the  Harriman  railroad  lines 

February  5— (19479)  Bill  for  local  self-government  in  the  Dis¬ 
trict  of  Columbia. 

February  7— (H.  Res  409)  House  resolution  to  investigate  the 
Lawrence  strike. 

February  23— (H.  Res.  422)  House  resolution  to  investigate  the 
Treasury  Department’s  attitude  toward  the  government 

April  24- — (H.  R.  23716)  Bill  for  government  ownership  of  wire¬ 
less  telegraphs. 

June  7— (H.  Res.  576)  House  resolution  for  the  impeachment  of 
Judge  Cornelius  H.  Hanford. 

July  10 — (H.  R.  25680)  A  bill  to  provide  for  the  employment  of 
all  willing  workers  and  for  other  purposes. 


5.  Progress  of  Woman  Suffrage. 

States  Having  Full  Suffrage. 

Wyoming,  Colorado,  Utah,  Idaho,  Washington,  California, 
Oregon,  Arizona  and  Kansas  and  Alaska  Territory. 

States  Having  School  Suffrage. 

Kentucky  (to  widows  with  children  of  school  age),  Minne¬ 
sota,  New  Hampshire,  Massachusetts,  New  York,  Vermont, 
Nebraska,  North  Dakota,  South  Dakota,  Montana,  New  Jersey, 
Illinois,  Connecticut,  Ohio,  Wisconsin,  Oklahoma,  New  Mexico 
and  Delaware  (to  taxpaying  women). 

States  Having  Limited  or  Qualified  Suffrage. 

Illinois,  full  municipal  and  partial  county,  state  and  federal 
suffrage;  Montana,  taxpaying  suffrage;  Iowa,  bond  suffrage; 
Minnesota,  library  trustees;  Louisiana,  tax  suffrage  to  women 
taxpayers;  New  York,  taxpaying  suffrage,  local  taxation  in  all 
towns  and  villages  in  the  state;  New  York,  women  in  all  towns, 
villages  and  third-class  cities  vote  on  bonding  propositions. 

Countries  Having  Full  Suffrage. 

New  Zealand,  New  South  Wales,  Tasmania,  Queensland,. 
Australia,  Victoria  and  Finland;  Denmark,  Norway,  Iceland, 
women  over  25  years  of  age. 

Countries  Having  Municipal  Suffrage. 

New  Brunswick,  Nova  Scotia,  Manitoba,  British  Columbia, 
Northwest  Territory,  Ontario,  Sweden,  Honduras,  Capital  City 
of  Belize. 


331 


Countries  Having  Limited  or  Qualified  Suffrage. 

The  following  countries  have  municipal  suffrage  to  widows 
and  single  women:  England,  Scotland,  Province  of  Quebec. 

The  women  of  the  following  countries  have  limited  or  quali¬ 
fied  suffrage:  Isle  of  Man,  parliamentary;  England,  county; 
Scotland,  county;  England,  parish  and  district  to  widows  and 
single  women;  Ireland,  to  all  offices  except  to  member  of  par¬ 
liament;  France,  women  engaged  in  commerce  can  vote  for 
judges  of  the  tribunal  of  commerce;  Belgium,  vote  for  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  Conseils  des  Prudhommes;  Province  of  Voralberg, 
single  women  and  widows  paying  taxes;  Scotland,  county  suf- 
i  frage;  Bosnia,  parliamentary  vote  to  women  owning  a  certain 
\  amount  >of  real  estate;  Province  of  Krain  (Austria),  suffrage 
to  the  women  of  its  capital  city,  Liabaca;  Kingdom  of  Wurtem- 
berg,  women  engaged  in  agriculture  vote  for  members  of  the 
Chamber  of  Agriculture;  India  (Gaekwar  of  Baroda),  women  of 
his  dominions  vote  in  municipal  elections. 


States  Where  Amendment  Is  Now  Before  Voters. 


House.  Senate.  Goes  to  Voters. 

Montana  . 75-2  15-2  1914 

Nebraska  by  initiative .  1914 

Nevada  . 49-3  19-3  1914 

North  Dakota  .  77-29  31-19  1914 

South  Dakota  .  70-30  41-2  1914 

States  Where  Amendment  Has  Passed  One  Legislature  and 
Must  Pass  Another. 

Lowa  .  81-26  31-15  1916 

Massachusetts  . 168-39  34-2  1915 

New  Jersey  . 49-4  15-3  1914 

New  York  . 125-5  40-2  1915 

Pennsylvania . 131-70  26-22  1915 


States  Where  Initiative  Petitions  Are  Under  Way. 


Missouri  . 1914 

Ohio  . 1914 

Oklahoma . 1914 


t 


APPENDIX 


1.  Area  and  Population  of  United  States. 

(Statistics  of  the  United  States— World  Almanac,  1912.) 

Sq.  miles.  Population. 


1800 . 

1810 .  1,999,775 

1820 .  2,059,043 

1830 .  2,059,043 

1840 .  2,059,043 

1850 .  2,980,959 


Sq.  miles.  Population. 
827,844  5,308,483 


7,239,881 

9,638,453 

12,866,020 

17,069,453 

23,191,876 


I860 .  3,025,600 

1870 .  3,025,600 

1880 .  3,025,600 

1890 .  3,025,600 

1900 .  3,025,600 

1910 .  3,026,789 


31,443,321 

38,588,371 

50,155,783 

62,622,250 

76,303,387 

93,346,543 


3. 


2  Statistics  of  the  United  States. 

(From  the  World  Almanac,  1912.) 

Area,  square  miles,  3,026,789. 

Population,  93,346,543. 

Population  per  square  mile,  30.99. 

Wealth,  $107,104,211,917. 

Wealth  per  capita,  $1,310.11. 

Public  debt,  less  cash  in  Treasury,  $1,046,449,185. 

Public  debt  per  capita,  $11.35. 

Interest-bearing’  debt,  $913,317,490. 

Annual  interest  charge,  $21,275,602. 

Interest  per  capita,  $0.23. 

Total  circulation  of  money,  $3,102,355,605. 

Per  capita,  $34.33. 

Deposits  in  national  banks,  $'5,287,216,312. 

Deposits  in  savings  banks,  $4,070,486,247. 

Depositors  in  savings  banks,  9,142,708. 

Value  of  farm  products,  $8,926,000,000. 

Manufacturing  establishments,  268,491  (from  Census  1910) 
Value  of  product,  $20,672,052,000  (from  Census  1910) 
Commercial  failures,  12,652. 

Amount  of  liabilities,  $201,757,097. 

Immigrants  arrived,  1,041,570. 

Expenditures  for  Education  During  School  Years 
1907-8  and  1908-9. 

(U.  S.  Statistical  Abstract  for  1910,  page  98.) 


1907- 8— 

Salaries  of  teachers . ,.... . . 

Total  expenditure . . . 

1908- 9— 

Salaries  of  teachers . 

Total  expenditure  .  * 

Total  expenditure  for  education  for  the  two  years . 

Total  expenditure  for  war  during  the  same  years  (Sta¬ 
tistical  Abstract  for  1910,  page  678) . 

Expenditure  per  capita  for  education, 
for  1912,  page  427 . 


Tribune  Almanac 


$219,780,123 

371,344,410 

$237,013,913 

401,397,747 

772,742,157 

847,999,918 


4.45 


The  report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education  for  1911  gives 
the  following  figures: 

Average  annual  cost  per  pupil  in  day  schools,  based  on 
average  attendance: 

$23.40  to  $44.75;  secondary  schools,  from  $43.95  to  $102  03 
In  cities  of  over  100,000  population,  elementary  schools— Prom 
In  cities  of  from  25,000  to  100,000  population— Elementary  schools, 
$14.08  to  $41.11;  secondary  schools,  $32.50  to  $92  78 
In  cities  of  from  10,000  to  25,000  population-elementary  schools, 
$11.27  to  $39.52;  secondary  schools,  $31.67  to  $79.77. 

Salaries  of  teachers,  average  per  month  in  1910— Men,  $33  23: 
women,  $31.65. 


333 


4.  Urban  and  Rural  Population. 

(Thirteenth  Census  of  United  States.) 


Year.  Per  cent;  urban.  Per  cent  rural. 

1880  29.5  70.5 

1890  36.1  63.9 

1900  40.5  59.5 

1910  46.3  53.7 


This  table  shows  the  irresistibile  gravitation  of  the  rural 
population  towards  and  into  the  cities.  Thirty  years  ago  70 
per  cent  of  our  population  was  in  the  rural  districts,  and  only 
30  per  cent  in  the  cities;  now  less  than  54  per  cent  is  rural,  and 
over  46  per  cent  is  urban. 

5.  Cost  of  Government. 

(Table  of  appropriations  prepared  by  the  clerks  to  the  Com¬ 
mittees  on  Appropriations  of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Rep¬ 
resentatives.  Quoted  from  Republican  Campaign  Book, 
1910,  page  96.) 


Title.  Year  1909-10. 

Agriculture  . $  12,995,036.00 

Army  .  101,195,883.34 

Fortification  .  8,170,111.00 

Military  Academy  .  2,531,521.33 

Navy  .  126,907,049.00 

Pension  . 160,988,000.00 

Diplomatic  and  consular  .  3,613,861.67 

District  of  Columbia  .  10,699,531.49 

Indian  . .  11,854,982.48 

Legislative,  etc .  32,007,049.00 

Postoffice  .  231,692,370.00 

River  and  harbor . 8,435,750.00 

Sundry  civil  .  137,696,623.36 


Total  . $  862,735,918.72 

Deficiency,  1910  and  prior .  20,310,339.92 


Total  . $  883,046,258.64 

Miscellaneous  .  1,259,515.96 

Total  regular  annual  appropriations .  884,305,774.60 

Permanent  annual  appropriations .  160,096,082.52 


Grand  total  . $1,044,401,857.12 


Amount  of  estimated  revenues  for  fiscal  year  1911.  233,058,572.37 

•Total  of  estimated  revenues  for  fiscal  year  1911...  905,058,572.37 

In  the  table  on  appropriations  note  that  the  appropriations  for 
war  (army,  fortifications,  military  academy,  navy  and  pensions)  is 
about  half  of  the  total  appropriations. 

INCREASED  COST  OF  GOVERNMENT. 


In  1880  . . . $  372,119,629.30 

In  1890  .  385,522,367,61 

In  1900  .  690,667,188.54 

In  1910  .  1,044,401,857.12 


6.  New  Wealth  Produced  Annually  in  the 
United  States. 

From  several  sources  we  have  gathered  the  following  figures, 
which  must  be  taken  as  only  partial  and  tentative: 


Agriculture  (all  crops,  including  cotton,  sugar,  etc.) 

est.  1910,  The  International  Whitaker . $  8,928,000,000 

Manufactures  (value  added),  Bureau  of  Census  Re¬ 
port,  1912  .  8,530,261,000 

Minerals  (all  metals  and  petroleum  products),  pre¬ 
pared  by  U.  S.  Geological  Survey . .* .  2,003,744,869 

Timber  and  wood,  World  Almanac,  1913 .  1,250,000,000 


Total  . $20,712,005,869 


334 

7.  Railway  Capital,  1888  to  1911,  as  Reported  by  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission, 

IKR9'*  »o  Funded  Debt.  Total  Cnnitni 

-1000*  . . $3,864,468,055  $  4,265,319,676  $  8  129  787  791 

j||§ . -  •  —  *  *  4,763,984,655  ?  I'.Oll’.lfHli 

ilil: t\hi:kk  V**  I’ elS’ioS’Tls  toiMTiioiB 

118: . •  •  :  :  :  :  : S&tti  i8:l§l:I34l;l?04 

td  ::::::::::::::  :  :  S :SK  I;  ; HSilSS  ll’lillliill 

ilSI: :::::: . dstitsill  imSbJooS:??! 

1  o a 0  .  0,000, /bo, 321  5,430,285,710  10  818  554  031 

1900 :::::::: : : : : : : :  ii:2|?:§H:||g 

i902; : : : : : : : :  |;g||;l||;I||  iSHSliS 

1905 "  '* *  *  '* ** *  j:  :  :  WU:l!l 

1Qn» .  6,554,557,051  7,250,701,070  13  805  2*18121 

JJSS .  6,803,760,093  7  766  661  385  14  570  421  4?8 

]l°nl . . .  7,356,86 1,691  8,725  284  992  16  082  146  683 

JJJJ .  7,373,212  323  9,393,332,504  16  767  544  827 

.  7,687,278,545  9,801,590,390  17  487  868^?^ 

4919 .  8,113,717,611  10  303  474  858  18  417  132*238 

1911 .  8,470,717,611  10,738,217,470 

Note-— Previous  to  1896  current  liabilities  were  included  in  rail¬ 
way  capital  under  the  head  of  funded  debt.  Since  1895  this  item 
as  not  been  included  in  capital  account.  Current  liabilities  in 

*®9*  In.C™aSe?  *he  total  of  railway  capital  by  more  than  six  hun¬ 
dred  million  dollars. 


8. 


Railway  Dividends,  1888  to  1911,  as  Reported  by  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission. 


Cd  *3  °  <U  I'd0 

Year-  m  si  up 

1111 .  »l’l9„°.2«J.lf9  180,238,065  6.38  " 

i  o nn .  38.33  1,629,750,927  82,110  198  5  04 

}!?? .  36.24  1,598,131,933  S^On  613  5!45 

ioqn .  on'^n  1,796,390,636  91,117,913  5  07 

JlSi .  309-49  1.825,705,437  97!614;?45  5.35 

Tgof .  3J-76  1,809,600,846  100,929  885  5  58 

.  36-57  1,767,925,565  95,515,226  5.40 

.  oa'o4  1,485,618,453  85,287,543  5  74 

.  39.83  1,559,024,075  87,603,371  5*62 

Js9S .  ??•??  M?2’94?’9?S  87,110,599  5.43 

joqq .  33.74  1,818,113,082  96,152,889  5.29 

jq99 .  49  l^’H9’502’545  111,009,822  4.96 

iqq? .  ^’668,969,895  139,597,972  5.23 

i?02 .  kI'%1  2,977,575, 179  156,735,784  5.26 

I99? .  65.40  3,337,644,681  185,391,655  5.55 

Tqn? .  66.06  3,450,737,869  196,728,176  5  70 

.  °7.4 7  3,643,427,319  221  941  049  6  nq 

J305. .  62.84  4,119,086,714  237*964*482  K  78 

Jq99 . * .  66.54  4,526,958,760  272, *795*974  6‘03 

.  VAl  f,9f3»756,203  308,088,627  6.23 

}99q .  65.69  4’343’370,740  390,695,351  8.07 

.  64.01  4,920,174,118  321,071  626  6  53 

4919 .  66.71  5,412,578,457  405;77i;416  7  50 

1911-‘ .  67.65  5,730,250,326  460,195,376  8.03 

Note—For  1908  and  the  years  following  the  figures  do  not  in¬ 
clude  returns  for  switching  and  terminal  companies. 

9.  Size  of  Families  in  the  United  States. 

According  to  the  Census  of  1900,  there  were  in  the  country 
at  large,  16,739,797  familes  of  which 

17.5  per  cent  were  composed  of  3  persons. 

17.0  per  cent  were  composed  of v  4  persons. 

14.2  per  cent  were  composed  of,  5  persons. 

10.8  per  cent  were  composed  of  6  persons. 

7.7  per  cent  were  composed  of  7  persons. 


